Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. Anglo-Ind.) excl. indicating distress.

[1855		J.H. Stocqueler ‘The crime of colour’ in Patriotic Fund Jrnl 17 Feb. 165/2: ‘Bappree bap!’ exclaimed the Scotch lady, adopting the tone and phrase of wonderment common to the Hindoos. ‘You don’t mean it.’.
1868		Out of the Meshes II 273: ‘Would not your Royal Highness like to come into the next room and see the dancers?’ said the Major in great perplexity, forgetting all about the inflected verbs. / ‘No, Bobbery Bob! I’ll drink some more sherbet, old man’.
1886		Yule & Burnell Hobson-Jobson 76/1: Bobbery-bob!, interj. The Anglo-Indian colloquial representation of a common exclamation of Hindus when in surprise or grief – ‘B?p-re! or B?p-re B?p’ ‘O, Father!’.
1902		H. Compton Free Lance in a Far Land 187: ‘And that’s my reward for subjugating Umbajee’s country. Bobbery bob and bobbery bob! ’Tis a foul, cruel, ungrateful world’ [Ibid.] 270: Bobbery Bob! Bobbery Bob! There’s four feet of rusty steel and a knobby bamboo skewered through my witals.
1935		M.H. Beattie On the Hooghly 67: The tug was the Scinde, Captain Hand, known as ‘Bobbery Bob’ Hand.
1995		J. Chatterjee Last Train to Innocence 183: ‘Bobbery-bob, Mrs Bagchi! I love Christmas in Cal! My bachchas don’t give me a moment’s peace!’.