Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK society) a manner of walking taken up by fashionable society as a deliberate tribute to the way in which Princess Alexandra (1844–1925), then Princess of Wales, walked c.1870.

1869		Paisley Herald 11 Dec. n.p.: Young ladies of Paisley, to the front! Show loyalty!! It is the latest thing out!!! [...] We refer to the Alexandra Limp!
1870		G.M. Hopkins 1 Mar. in Further Letters (1956) 110: He is going to make use of the ‘Alexandrian step’ when he can walk, that is the step wh. suddenly became the thing at court when the Princess of Wales got lame with a sore knee .
1871		Falkirk Herald 13 July 3/6: The ‘Alexandra Limp’ has given place to the ‘Bismarck quickstep’ in London fashionable circles.
1876		Chambers’s Journal 629: Your own advocacy of the Grecian bend and the Alexandra limp – both positive and practical imitations of physical affliction [F&H].
1880		C.M. Yonge Bye-words 304: she has broken out more ridiculously than ever with her hair frizzed out, and her Alexandra limp, and all her most unnatural airs .
1889		Leicester Dly Mercury 5 Jan. 3/4: One [...] cracked up and left the field with a lameness more apparent than the once fashionable Alexndra limp.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1909		(ref. to early 1870s) J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 4/2: Alexandra Limp (Soc., ab. 1872). An affected manner of walking seen for several years amongst women. Said to have been imitated from the temporary mode in which the then Princess of Wales walked after some trouble with a knee.
1938		(ref. to 1870s) Western Dly Press 27 Oct. 8/5: She recalls the Alexandra limp which was developed by women of the day out of sympathy for the Princess of Wales.