Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a prostitute, a street-walker.

[1788		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 133: She has been not six months upon the Pave de Londres].
[1790		M.P. Andrews Better Late than Never 43: [of a woman] Hackney’d as the pavé – notorious, common].
1823		Westmoreland Gaz. 7 June 1/5: He slided on ten paces [...] cote a cote with a nymph of the pave.
1825		Stamford Mercury 29 July 3/2: Srah Clarke, a nymph of the pavé, was found guilty of stealing.
1827		P. Cunningham New South Wales II 277: She was accounted a sort of witch by the nymphs of the pavé.
1828		London Standard 15 July 4/2: Ellen Kelly, a nymph of the pave, was charged with stabbing a nightwatchman.
1830		Reading Mercury 30 Aug. 3/4: A ‘lady of the pave,’ named Hildyard, was fined on Monday [...] for assaulting a poor decrepit old man.
1835		Duncombe Dens of London 82: A Welshman, who began beating his wife (a girl of the pavé), for her excessive partiality for gin.
1837/8		‘Tale Of A Shift’ in Cuckold’s Nest 33: I will pitch you a rummy stave / About a shift on a nymph of the pavé.
1838		Crim.-Con. Gaz. 29 Sept. 42/2: The speaker of the House of Commons passing a lady of the pave said [...] ‘You have no idea how dreadfully that girl swears’.
1842		Nichols’ Wkly Arena (NY) 4 June n.p.: The keeper is a married man, but [...] very fond of ladies of the pave.
1843		Carlisle Jrnl 5 Aug. 2/8: Five ladies of the pavé have been brought up for being drunk and disorderly of the streets.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 4 Feb. 2/3: Nymphs of the Pavé are as are as numerous here as in any city of the world.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 25 Mar. 3/4: He is recommended to confine himself to Ladies du pave, instead of trying it on with married ones.
1846		New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus 15: ‘Nymphs of the Pavé’ drop in to refresh themselves with the essence of berry, after perambulating the neighbouring streets and avenues. [Ibid.] 38: Here the pets of the pavé are in good order – as plum as partidges and wicked as kittens.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 14 Feb. 2/6: [heading] An Out-and-Outer. Mary Ann Hadley, a nymph of the pave [...] was brought up on warrant.
1848		Paul Pry 13 Nov. n.p.: The night [...] there was about a dozen ladies of the pave in a most filthy state; and the language would make human nature shudder.
1848		Sinks of London Laid Open 88: The nymphs of the pavé, who made this place their habitation, were all returned from the toils of the night.
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 115: ‘Nymphs of the Pave.’ Courtesans.
1849		Sam Sly 20 Jan. 3/1: SAM advises B—j—n [...] not to allow [his daughters] to frequent a neighbouring ball-room, where the company is not very select, comprising nymphs of the pave, and a set of drunken pickpockets.
1848		Satirist & Blade (Boston, MA) 19 Feb. n.p.: The nymphs of the pave have taken advantage of the fineness of the weather [...] We even saw several whom we had supposed had gone to grass, attempting to revive their faded beauties.
1849		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 1 Sept. n.p.: A host of others, ‘girls of the pave,’ both of your city and Salem.
1850		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 6 Apr. n.p.: He is known to all the ladies of the pave as Sykesey.
1851		Western Police Gaz. (Cincinnati, OH) 29 Mar. n.p.: Two celebrated ‘nymphs of the pave’.
1852		Kendal Mercury 24 Jan. 6/1: [He]had just resigned the respectable offices of councillor[,] ‘milling kid’ and ‘fence’ for a few of the Liverpool ‘nymphs of the pave’.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 27 Mar. 3/1: Ann Thompson, a young nymph of the pave.
1858		Portland Guardian (Vic.) 10 Feb. 2/5: It appears our nymphs de pave occasionally visit Geelong, to transact a little business.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 51/1: Twelve or fifteen privileged nymphs du pavé were whirling around on the carpeted floor, to the music of a piano and violin.
1868		Hobart Town Punch (Tas.) 15 Feb. 3/2: You have got to stare hard at each ‘nymphe de pavee’.
1869		G. Ellington Women of N.Y. 204: A man of either of these classes is invariably attracted by the fine dress and personal appearance of the nymph du pavé.
1873		Northern Argus (Rockhampton, Qld) 27 Dec. 2/5: A nymph de pave [...] was ordered to pay a fine of 20s. or to be imprisoned for 24 hours. Sergeant Owens stated that prisoner and another woman were somewhat hilarious upon the pathway [...] singing aud assaulting passoers by with their parasols.
1879		London Life 31 May 4/1: The intelligent foreigner [...] were he to take a stroll up Regent Street [...] would be struck with the comparative absence from the ‘pave’ of the customary nymphs thereof.
1877		Dodge City Times (KS) 2 June 8/2: Anna Smith, a nymph du pave, was sent up for thirty days.
1879		Memphis Daily Appeal May n.p.: Several parties were seated in the room, including several of the demimonde and three sports, who were watching with great interest a bed in the farther end of the apartment. Upon this bed was lying a Chinaman and a white nymph du pavé.
1881		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 May. 9/1: You are evidently either a very pious young man, a very old lady, or a converted nymph de pavé beyond middle age.
1883		Bristol Magpie 11 Jan. 6/2: There are, however, other promenaders of the fair sex whose occupation in life is rather more dubious [...] from flaunting young hussies of fourteen or fifteen to fast spinsters of thirty or more. [...] These nymphs du pave also manifest a great affection for imitation sealskin jackets.
1885		Age (Melbourne) 20 June 13/2: [A] woman with whom tho most abandoned nymph de pave of the city was a vestal virgin in comparison.
1886		H. Goldsmid Dottings of a Dosser 62: Through Drury Lane, where two ‘nymphs of the pavement’ were.
1886		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 27 Feb. 7/1: [They] drink brandy cocktails between ‘pipes’ with the hardihood of regular nymphs du pave.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) IX 1847: I saw one of the very smallest, almost diminutive nymphs of the pavé.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1899		Clipper (Hobart, Tas.) 27 May 7/1: [N]ymphs de pave always figure at every race meet, among the best dressed and certainly not the least lady-like women of the grand stand.
1902		St Louis Republican (MO) 31 Aug. 37/2: Sweetling feminine articles [...] only fit for the nymph du pave.
1901		W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 17 Mar. 3/4: Those sanctimonious gentlemen who pretend to be horror-stricken at such a thing as a ‘nymph-de-pave’ .
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 12 Mar. 1/1: The nymph of the pave is an increasing nuisance in Perth [and] Barrack and Wellington streets are the nightly haunts of the soliciting sisterhood.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 11 Nov. 4/7: Femmes de pave who keep the crook / In tucker and togs in the rue de Brook.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Dec. 39/1: Have you niver bin shtandin’ f’r half-an-hour or so pursuin’ airy badinage wid a noice-lookin’ nymph doo pavé (as the French call ’em) whin you should have bin paddin’ round yure bate?
1921		Broadway Brevities Dec 14/1: Another puzzler, rather sociological in its nature, is ‘where did all the nymphs of the pave go?’.
1921		Truth (Sydney) 6 Nov. 7/8: Flighty Fairy Florrie [...] She was what is known as a nymph de pave, and was caught soliciting in Elizabeth-street on the previous night.
1922–24		O.O. McIntyre White Light Nights 24: Out of the side street in the Furious Forties seeps a roguishly rouged nymphe du pavé.
1932		New Call (Perth, WA) 28 Jan. 12/7: Male drug addicts lurk in dark doorways for the homecoming ‘nymph de pave,’ and they hold her up at gun point to steal her evilly begotten few shillings so that they can satisfy the craving for cocaine.
1938		H. Asbury Sucker’s Progress 290: Two thousand nymphes du pavé maintained rooms on the upper floors of office buildings.
1945		Scone Advocate (NSW) 5 Oct. 3/3: [A]n unusually heavy infestation of gangsters, gunmen, magsmen, together with their kept women, female money-spinners, and an assorted collection of nymphs de pave — mostly blondes.
1952		(con. 1861-5) B.I. Wiley Life of Billy Yank 261: The nymphs du pave were the more objectionable because of being the scum of the Northern underworld.
1953		Wingham Chron. (NSW) 21 July 2/8: It was there, for years past, that nymphs de pave have been bringing grist to the Devine-Parsons mill.
1963		(con. 1870s) Miller & Snell Why the West was Wild 14: The names by which the frontiersmen referred to the ladies in question [...] nymphs of the prairie, nymphs du pavé.
1993		I.L. Allen City in Sl. (1995) 40: A streetwalker works ‘the streets,’ where she was known as a nymph of the pavé or a pavement princess.
2001		(con. late 19C) C. Jeffords Shady Ladies of the Old West 🌐 The euphemisms for prostitution were many [...] ‘crib/parlor-house girls’, ‘Cyprians’, ‘nymphs of the pavé’ [etc.].