What I suspect happened is that Knight had perhaps watched a tinker at work and inquired as to the name of the wad of dough he’d seen the tinker using as a little dam for holding something or other more or less in place.
Knight published something called “The Practical Dictionary of Mechanics.” He included what was almost certainly the first citation of the phrase “tinker’s dam” with the “wad of dough” explanation. The story of the origin of the “tinker’s dam” theory is interesting. It seems to me that if the most devout and mild-mannered curate took up the tinker’s trade, perhaps as some sort of penance, and started mending metal utensils, his tools being tin snips, tongs, hammers, pliers, solder and a fire, which he must excite to white heat with a bellows, he would, within a short time, be slugging down the sauce and using words of which “damn” would be the least remarkable. In the 19th Century, the expressions “drunk as a tinker” and “swears like a tinker” were commonplace, as were, “not worth a tinker’s curse” and “not worth a tinker’s damn.” In the old days when tinkers traveled about the countryside toting the tools of their trade, they were considered a rather disreputable lot.
That’s a commonly known fact that seems to have found its way into dinner-party-conversational trivia for more than a century. After use, the “dam” was tossed away as worthless thus, “not worth a tinker’s dam.” The theory has it that a tinker’s dam is a small piece of dough or putty that was fashioned to hold molten solder in place while the tinker was repairing pots and pans. It’s been a long time since I last did so, and I still get letters, the most recent just last week-a very pleasant one from a lady named Olive Swanson-saying that “tinker’s damn” is wrong, because the proper phrase is “tinker’s dam” so here we go again. I’ve written about the expression “not worth a tinker’s damn” before.
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