Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) genteel, petit-bourgeois Irish-Americans.

1930		J.T. Farrell ‘Looking Em Over’ in Short Stories (1937) 43: Stuck up! I’ll bet she’s lace-curtain Irish.
1947		J. Gunther Inside USA 513: The ‘lace curtain’ Irish replaced the ‘cattle Irish’; they moved slowly through Boston like a glacier.
1977		B.C. Schaaf Mr Dooley’s Chicago 71: Fred Allen once defined lace-curtain Irish as ‘people who have fruit in the house when no one is sick.’.
1987		A. Quindlen N.Y. Times 30 Dec. n.p.: The Neapolitans looked down on the Sicilians; the lace-curtain Irish thought themselves better than the shanty Irish [R].
1994		M. Seller Immigrant Women 320: Her scorn for the lace-curtain Irish was constant.
2006		M. Connelly Sundance Reader 241: Within fifty years of the initial migrations, there were many lace-curtain Irish and middle-class blacks.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1957		K.W. Underwood Protestant and Catholic 209: The lace-curtain Irish children go to fancy schools [and] make respectable friends.
1967		L. Bruce Essential Lenny Bruce 16: One hunky funky lace-curtain Irish mick.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 163: Scrawny lace-curtain Irish cocksuck—.