Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a dancehall, a dancer in a dancehall; also attrib.; thus hurdy-gurdy house, hurdy-gurdy girl.

c.1860		Virginia City (NV) Enterprise n.p.: A German named Charles Hurtzal [...] visited the hurdy-gurdy house on B Street.
1869		J.R. Browne Adventures in Apache Country 346: Hurdy-gurdy girls are singing bacchanalian songs in bacchanalian dens.
1870		Boise Statesman 22 Oct. 3/3: What is the reason Ada county does not collect her hurdy licenses? [DA].
1872		‘Mark Twain’ Roughing It 303: There were [...] hotels, theatres, ‘hurdy-gurdy houses,’ wide-open gambling palaces [etc.].
1876		J.G. Bourke Journal 8 Sept. 22: Close by these were ‘hurdy-gurdys,’ where the music from asthmatic pianos timed the dancing of painted, padded, and leering Aspasias [DA].
1880		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 10 Jan. 15/1: [headline] A Bowery Inferno Where thieves, Prostitutes and Blacklegs Generally/ HOLD MIDNIGHT REVEL / A New York ‘Hurdy-Gurdy’ That Surpasses Life in the Mines of the West for Unadulterated Deviltry .
1894		S.F. Midwinter Appeal 7 Jan. 1/4: For some time the old hurdy joint down at Forks Flat has been the only place where a miner could enjoy social life after a hard days’ work [DA] [Ibid.] 19 May 3/3: Leaving the hurdy-house [...] we struck out to see the sights [DA].
1897		S.T. Clover Paul Travers’ Adventures 34: Dance halls, hurdy-gurdy saloons, cheap clothing stores [...] constituted the ‘substantial’ buildings [DA].
1922		(con. late 19C) Vivia Hemphill Down the Mother Lode 60: The hurdy-gurdy girls with shrieks of laughter pounced upon the noisy newcomer.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 175: I put in the winter investigating the cheap dives, hurdy-gurdies, and dance halls.
1944		(con. late 19C) Nancy Ross Westward 127: Women who frequented dance halls, hurdy-gurdy houses, and other social centers of mining-camp days were bound to see some fancy shooting and some fancy characters [DA].
1946		(con. late 19C) J.T. Adams Album of Amer. Hist. III 218: ‘Hurdy-gurdy’ girls, hired by the saloon keepers to dance with all comers, provided feminine society for the lonely miners [DA].
2001		(con. late 19C) Christine Jeffords Shady Ladies of the Old West 🌐 An institution apparently peculiar to the West was the dance hall, sometimes known as a ‘hurdy-gurdy house.’ [Ibid.] The older hurdy-gurdy girl [...] routinely took to alcohol and narcotics.

2. (US Und.) Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

1940

‘Und. Place-Names’ in AS XV:3 Oct. 341/2: Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is known far and wide as The Hurdy Gurdy because of a quaint custom once practiced by the police there. Pickpockets commonly carry their fall-dough (cash reserve to be used only in case of arrest) sewed up in the seams of their clothes. The detective force, knowing this, instituted a solemn ceremony which the pickpockets called the hurdy gurdy [...]; the detectives stripped all pickpockets naked, cut their clothes to ribbons in search of caches of money, returned the bundle of rags to the unfortunate thieves, then forced them to swim the Cedar River on their way out of town.