Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a beadle.

c.1597		Shakespeare Henry IV Pt 2 V iv: I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you bluebottle rogue!
[1607		Middleton Michaelmas Term III v: To be free from the interruption of blue beadles and other bawdy officers].
1678		Four for a Penny 4: Mrs. Joan when she is minded to see her Sweet-heart, and Gammer Blew-bottle going to a Christening, muster up the Pence o’th’ Saturday-night to redeem their best Riggings out of Captivity.
1822		(con. early 17C) W. Scott Fortunes of Nigel I 281: I fancy you would love to move to Court with him, followed by a round score of old blue-bottles, with white heads and red noses, with bucklers and broadswords.

2. (also bottle, Mr Bluebottle) a police officer; thus bluebottle mob, the police force; also attrib.

1832		Satirist (London) 2 Sept. 286/3: This queer little man on the Blue-bottle's back, / Soon found he’d got into a scrape / [...] /The Policeman shook with laughter, / Which shook him off his back.
1840		Era (London) 18 Oct. 5/4: I cut my lucky, as the blue-bottle was a comin’ up.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 19 Aug. 3/3: The blue-bottle who last addressed the court, was a very nice specimen of everything that a blue-bottle ought not to be.
c.1850		‘Wakefield Gaol’ in R. Palmer Touch of the Times 252: If the fates should me increase And make me deputy of police, And this blue bottle turned about, Oh, wouldn’t I nicely serve him out.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 24 July 2/7: Lady re-gagged, re-folded up and re-bundled out in the most approved blue-bottle fashion.
1854		Bell’s Life in Sydney 24 June 2/5: Tasker called him ‘a sanguinary Peeler’, ‘'a contemptible Charley’, and ‘a sneaking blue-bottle’.
1866		Wild Boys of London I 125/2: You shan’t collar me, yer ugly bluebottle!
1866		Carlisle Patriot 27 Feb. 1/2: Policeman, Mr Bluebottle.
c.1868		‘A New Political and Reform Alphabet’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 83: M stands for Mayne [...] the chief of the Bluebottle mob.
1878		C. Hindley Life and Times of James Catnach 203: The term ‘bobby’ — after Robert Peel, immediately became the cant word, together with ‘Blue Bottles,’ [...] and other opprobrious terms.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 21 Feb. 1/4: We waited rather anxiously and the myrmidons of the law did come […]; but who could break through such a closely packed army of ladies […] – they quietly ignored the ‘blue-bottles’ and their buzz.
1884		Dundee Courier 12 Feb. 7/5: You are a thundering fool! [...] Some of these fellows will put the blue bottles on to you.
1892		Illus. Police News 25 June 4/2: ‘Look sharp, we’ve had the bluebottles about a good deal to-day’.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 10: Blue Bottle, a policeman.
1898		F. Dumont Dumont’s Joke Book 28: A policeman is a ‘blue’ bottle.
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Dec. 13/3: [T]he man who doesn’t get it [permission] will stand in the crowd and mutter darkly that he, at all events, wouldn’t buy the right to speak by pandering to the vicious passions of a corrupt ‘bluebottle.’.
1913		Yorks. Post 29 Aug. 7/5: The writer substitutes the words ‘policeman’ and ‘police’ for ‘bluebottles’ and ‘blue devils’.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 3 Jan. 4/2: A disinclination to ‘move on’ to as great a degree as a bounding bluebottle thinks fit.
1927		(con. 1835–40) P. Herring Bold Bendigo 113: Damn the Doncaster bluebottles.
1936		N. Marsh Death in Ecstasy 50: Run a line of chalk round the body and get the bluebottle in there to ring for the mortuary-van.
1945		D. Bolster Roll On My Twelve 100: Old Bluebottle for once came over all Commanderish and told him firmly: ‘It’s time you went back to your ship, young man.’.
1954		Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 12: The man of sensibility shrinks from being closeted with an ex-bluebottle with magistrate blood in him.
1965		P. Carstairs Concrete Kimono 159: I appeared to be surrounded by the bluebottles.
1966		M. Braly It’s Cold Out There (2005) 193: A class neighborhood, the bottles bust you on sight.
1977		S. Berkoff East in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 49: Blue-bottles with truncheons hard as iron.
1982		(con. 1930s–50s) E. Mac Thomáis Janey Mack, Me Shirt is Black 106: I’ve known cops by the name of [...] Blue Bottle.
1993		(con. 1945) S. McAughtry Touch and Go 182: The bluebottles were quite friendly.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 44: Words like academy (prison), bagged (imprisoned), anointed (flogged), bluebottle (policemen) [...] reflected the larrikin’s uneasy existence along the fuzzy line between working class life and criminality.
2010		K. Richards Life 287: It was also a real drag to wake up every day with these bluebottles around your doot, these bobbies.
2023		A. Nette Orphan Road 136: ‘Grosvenor Square, March 1968 [...] Eight thousand of us were charged by the blue bottles’.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 124: No question of driving themselves back at 3am with johnny bluebottle lurking in the bushes with his breathalyser.