John Collin

Head waiter and later proprietor of Limmer's Old House on Conduit Street in London, where from about 1807 he served the gin punch that both Collinses descend from; it is attested by 1834, and the still water in it gave way to soda in the same decade. He was celebrated in verse by the sons of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and that verse spells his name Collins - which is how the drinks are spelled, and why the man is easy to miss. He did not invent either cocktail: the split into a Tom and a John happened in New York thirty years later.