mops and brooms, adj. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

mops and brooms adj.

also all mops and brooms, mops and besoms

[? the old mop fairs, annual fairs held in the UK West Country, at which servants put themselves up for hire; a young woman would carry a mop or broom to indicate the job she desired. Such fairs were accompanied by much drinking; Hotten (1874) suggests that the world about them appears to resemble such implements to a very drunken person]

drunk.

1791		‘Song’ in New Vocal Enchantress 33: Tipsy, dizzy, muzzy, sucky, groggy, muddled, / Bosky, blind as Chloe, mops and brooms and fuddled.
1804		C.L. Lewes Comic Sketches 27: Rocky — Groggy — Blind as Chloe — Mops and Brooms, — and many other appellations too tedious to mention.
1814		Sporting Mag. XLIV. 188: ‘Now Tom, you’re drunk!’ ‘No Dame not I, I’m only mops and brooms!’.
1824		Annals of Sporting 1 Mar. 207: The latter, all mops and brooms, got hissed off, after being patted down twice.
1830		Egan Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 135: Logic [...] declared himself to be quite ‘mops and brooms,’ as to the confused state of his ‘upper storey.’.
1840		H.Cockton Valentine Ven xviii: He did mix, but scarcely took the rawness off the brandy... ‘The governor’s getting mops and brooms,’ whispered Horace [F&H].
1855		T. Haliburton Nature and Human Nature I 48: Lord, Sir, that ain’t it – she is mops and brooms [...] half seas over.
1864		London Standard 13 Dec. 3/3: He is all Mops and Brooms, or Off His Nut.
1868		Taunton Courier 19 Aug. 8/5: The first degree was that of sobriety [...] the sixth, when he was ‘mops and besoms’.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter II 180: ‘I never see a gentleman more mops and brooms in my life’.
1875		Jasper Wkly Courier (IN) 1 Oct. 6/2: We were all pretty well ‘mops and brooms’ when we came aboard, but Billy Carr was the worst.
1881		Shields Dly Gaz. 10 Jan. n.p.: For the one word drunk [...] we find mops and brooms [...] moony [...] swipy, lumpy [...] on the ran-tan.
1902		H. Baumann Londinismen (2nd edn).
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 177/2: Mops and brooms (Peoples’). Drunk – probably suggested by the hair getting disordered and like a mop.
1915		M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 219: all mops and brooms, drunk. ‘He is all mops and brooms tonight.’.
1933		‘William Juniper’ True Drunkard’s Delight 225: Our tippler may be [...] all mops and brooms.
1968		Green Bay Press-Gaz. (WI) 9 Jan. A2/4: If your smasher of a bird catches you all mops and brooms she may think you are all barmy on the carpet [...] It’s English. Not the king’s brand, but a cross-section of the mod mood in London .

In phrases

mop and broom (it) (v.)

to drink heavily.

1855

‘The Groggy Horse’ in Diprose’s Comic Song Book 7: He mopp’d and broom’d it jollily [...] Till he at least ‘the bucket kick’d’, / And died extremely drunk.