Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a down-and-out alcoholic, the most deprived of vagrants [stew n.² (1)].

1895		S.F. Call 21 Sept. 11/2: Until there is some way of raising campaign funds ‘de push’ — ‘stew bums,’ ‘hopheads’ and all — will have to go dry .
1897		J. London ‘The Road’ in Hendricks & Shepherd Jack London Reports (1970) 311–21: The ‘Stew Bum’ is the most despised of his kind. He is the Canaille, the Sansculotte, the fourth estate of trampland.
1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 21: He’s a big stew bum who blows all his dough at the track.
1916		‘A-No. 1’ Snare of the Road 125: With no other avenue left open, unless he desired to descend to the level of a common stew bum, one who warmed up handouts in castaway tin cans, he took a fling at the straight but narrow path.
1925		G.H. Mullin Adventures of a Scholar Tramp 46: The stew-bums or old dynos of the barrel-house saloons.
1937		E. Anderson Thieves Like Us (1999) 177: Something ought to be done about stew bums like that.
1940		E. O’Neill Iceman Cometh Act II: Who de hell yuh laughin’ at yuh half-dead old stew bum?
1951		N. Algren Chicago: City On the Make 70: The jungle hiders come softly forth: geeks and gargoyles, old blow winos, sour stewbums and grinning ginsoaks.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 72: What the hell you know? You ain’t nothin’ but a skid-row stewbum.
1970		in N.Y. Times 9 Oct. 1988 n.p.: In 1970, New London [Connecticut] changed the name of its Main Street to Eugene O’Neill Drive over the objections of Thomas J. Griffin, a former mayor, who called the playwright a ‘stew bum’ and asked, ‘What did he do besides write plays?’ [R].
1986		S. King It (1987) 49: Maybe it was just a stew bum or a transient wearing a bunch of cast-off clothing.
2003		N. Green Angel of Montague Street (2004) 53: Lot of people hang out down here. Freaks and stew-bums, whores, drug pushers.
2008		R. Price Lush Life 98: He had the cloudy red complexion of a stew bum .

2. (US tramp) one who eats only cheap foods [SE stew + bum n.³ (2)].

1929

V.W. Saul ‘Vocab. of Bums’ in AS IV:5 345: Stew bum—[...] one who exists on cheap foods.

3. a term of abuse [stew n.² (1)].

1928		Hecht & MacArthur Front Page Act I: Send us a postcard, you big stewbum.
1932		V.F. Nelson Prison Days and Nights 37: Those stew bums and working stiffs, what the hell good are they?
1937		T. Thursday ‘Little Boy Blooey’ in Ten Story Sports July 🌐 Go out and belt that stew-bum dizzy!
1968		K. Brasselle Cannibals 45: The wise asses that toss them phony baloney lines are called ‘stew-bums’.