bucket shop, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bucket shop n.

[‘The market authority in Chicago, called the Board of Trade, would not allow a deal in “options” of less than 5,000 bushels of grain. In order to catch men of small means, what was called the “Open Board of Trade” commenced business in an alley under the regular Board of Trade Rooms. There was an elevator to carry the members of the board to their rooms, and occasionally a member, if trade was slack, would call out, “I’ll send down and get a bucketful pretty soon,” referring to the speculators in the “Open Board of Trade” below’ (Leeds Mercury, December 1886)]

(orig. US)

1. (also bucket house) a gin-mill, a low-class liquor-shop.

1868		J.D. McCabe Secrets of the Great City 372: The poorer classes [...] get the poison from low shops, called bucket houses. These shops sell the vilest and most poisonous liquors, and derive their name from the fact that their customers usually bring buckets, bowls, or pitchers for the stuff, instead of bottles or jugs. They are confined to the worst quarters of the city, and are foul and wretched beyond description.
1869		N.Y. Times 2 Mar. 1/3: They [i.e. ‘the dusky race’] meet at the various bucket-shops about to plan burglaries and robberies from the person.
1872		Galaxy (N.Y.) Mar. 315: The vile liquor of the bucket-shop, which the slums, always felicitous in nomenclature, have called benzine.
1881		N.Y. Eve. Post Oct. n.p.: A ‘bucket-shop’ [...] is a low ‘gin-mill’ or ‘distillery’ where small quantities of spirits are dispensed in pitchers and pails. When the shops for dealing in one-share or five-share lots of stocks were opened, these dispensaries of smaller lots than could be got from regular dealers were at once named ‘bucket-shops’.
1887		Lantern (N.O.) 8 Oct. 2: Ben [...] keeps a bucket-shop, where bad whiskey can be had for five cents a load.
1911		S. Ford Torchy 106: Piddie wa’n’t goin’ to be any too sociable by dinner time that night, ’less’n he’d hit up the bucketshop, which the chances was against.

2. an unauthorized office used orig. for smaller gambling transactions in grain, and subsequently extended to offices for other descriptions of gambling and betting on the markets, stocks etc.

1869		G. Ellington Women of N.Y. 604: [caption] Life in the Slums – A ‘Bucket Shop’.
1881		see sense 1.
1890		J.P. Quinn Fools of Fortune 595: A ‘bucket shop’ is an establishment where those whose inclinations prompt them to speculate in stocks or produce.
1901		C.R. Wooldridge Hands Up! 74: He made a raid on the bucket shops and arrested all the speculators he could find.
1912		G.R. Chester Five Thousand an Hour Ch. xv: Your digestion is bad or else you made a recent winning in your favorite bucket-shop.
1919		‘Sapper’ Mufti 178: Surely some rights must go with the property — whether it’s land, or a coal mine, or a bucket shop.
1921		Broadway Brevities Dec 34: It is my object to guard the reader against those brokerage firms known as Bucketshops and I will attempt to bring to your attention any house ‘down on the street’ which is neither safe nor sound to trade with.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 90: [They] are trying to break up the branch stock exchanges and bucket shops.
1959		(con. 1900-29) L. Katcher Big Bankroll 165: A bucket-shop was an ostensibly legal brokerage firm. Some of these firms operated within the law. Others did not. The latter cheated their customers, stole from them, misused their customers’ money.
1966		J. Breslin [synd. col.] 30 Mar. The host said he was a stockbroker [...] He could have been telling the trutb because they must have 40,000 bucket shop operators in this town.

3. attrib. use of sense 2; also as general adj., dubious, fraudulent.

1886		Assemblymen & Senators from City of N.Y. 103: Mr. Ives has been severely criticised for his action with reference to the bucket-shop bill.
1894		G.A. Sala London up to Date 61: Chinese ‘bucket-shop’ keepers [...] accomplished proficients at fan-tan.
1899		A.C. Gunter M.S. Bradford Special 6: ‘I imagine the concern is not exactly on the square.’ ‘Kind of bucket-shop affair?’ .
1923		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 28 June [synd. col.] Fatuous optimists hanging over bucket shop tickers.
1932		V.F. Nelson Prison Days and Nights 95: He gradually developed into a big-time bucket-shop man.
1947		True Nov. 69/1: The two lawyers had in addition the business of every free-lance safecracker, forger, arsonist [...] bucket-shop proprietor, and panel thief whose business was worth having [DA].
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 81: He was once in trouble in New York on bucket shop charges.
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 39: Tommy sent us to his bucket-shop stockbroker.
1970		L. Sanders Anderson Tapes 22: Arrested on 18 March, 1964, during raid on bucket shop operation.

4. a cut-price travel agent, specializing in long-haul air flights.

1989

M. Amis London Fields 53: Keith thought of the holiday package he had concocted with his mate in the bucket-shop off Harrow Road: the hotel half-built.