Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the vagina.

1600		Rowlands Letting of Humours Blood 22: Gallus will haue no Barbour prune his beard [...] How comes he trymmed, you may aske me than? His Wenches do it with their warming-pan.
1623		Fletcher & Rowley Main in the Mill IV iv: Ile use no warming-pan but thine, Girle.
1688–92		Joyful News for Maids and Young Women n.p.: [She] put it [i.e. a white pudding] in her Warming-pan to keep it from the cold.
1834		‘The Lady’s Warming-Pan’ in Libertine’s Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) I 146: And he said that his warming-pan was his wife’ a—s!
1896		Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 48: Brasier, m. the female pudendum; ‘the warming-pan.’.

2. a female bed companion.

1655		J. Cotgrave ‘To His Mistress Desirous to Go to Bed’ Wits Interpreter (1671) 259: Make me thy maiden chamber-man, Or let me be thy warming-pan.
1675		Head Nugae Venales 10: One Night (Sir Reverence) she did shit-a-Bed; he leaping into it [...] cryed out, O Wife, I am beshit; No, Husband, says she, it is but a Coal drop’d out of your Warming-pan.
1708		N. Ward Adam and Eve 93: My Lady is feelingly sollicited by some insinuating Bawd, to become a carnal Warming-pan to some old gouty Courtier, who is so highly enamour’d with her youthful Perfections, that he cannot bridle his pamper’d Lust, without she will grant him a Bit, that may give a Check to his Concupiscence.
1755		Tom Brown’s Jester in G. Legman (1968) A citizen more tender of his wife than himself, used to make her go to bed first in the winter-time, and lie in his place to warm it, and then called her his warming pan.
1840		Flash Mirror 13: A man was in the habit of always sending wife to bed first in the winter, in order that she might warm the bed [...] For this service he tenderly denominated his wife his warming-pan.
1842		‘The Chambermaid’ in Whip and Satirist of NY 9 Apr. n.p.: Give me the young and active fellow, / Who, ripened oe’r the flowing can, / Goes to his bed jocose and mellow, / And laughs to scorn to warming pan.

3. a place-holder, a deputy, used orig. of clergy.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1866		Letters by an Odd Boy 161: I turn to a gentlemanly friend of mine, who holds a living pro tempore, and am taught to call him a ‘warming-pan rector’.
1882		Worcs Chron. (UK) 30 Sept. 8/5: ‘ Clerical Warming Pan’ [...] a disgraceful case of the clerical warming pan in its worst form.
1883		Pall Mall Gazette 21 Jan. n.p.: It is not usual to inform a man that you propose to use him as a warming-pan, however excellently suited he may be for such a purpose [F&H].
1891		Manchester Courier 28 Jan. 5/8: He was the best warming-pan the Irish anti-Parnellites could find, until they could restore Mr Parnell.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Nov. 12/4: A Sydney Johnnie in close attendance on one of the Roses of Persia was asked the other day what he was up to. ‘It’s quite an impersonal matter,’ he replied – ‘am merely acting as a warming-pan for a pal.’ [...] When a man is entrusted with the care of his friend’s best girl, she invariably gets hugged by deputy, kissed by proxy, and embraced under power of attorney.
1944		Post (Lanarks) 23 Apr. 6/2: Warming pan — one who temporarily fills another’s office.