Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a tantrum, a fit of temper.

1894		G.A. Henty Dorothy’s Double I 132: They goes out looking red in the face, and in a regular paddy, and you can see by the way they grips their umbrellas they would like to give it to some one .
1900		Sporting Times 24 Mar. 1/1: ‘I do wish you’d buck up and find a new laundress,’ said Adam one day, in a paddy, ‘there’s not a solitary button on these fig-leaves again!’.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 67: ‘Strike me perpendicular!’ he says, a-takin’ off his coat all in a flare and fluster, and workin’ hisself up into a blind white paddy.
1928		A.W. Upfield House of Cain 200: Now, now! Don’t get into a paddy.
1934		Film Fun 8 Sept. 24: Seeing the paddy he was in, Stan decided it would be as well to skip out of it.
1951		Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 28: Nearly burst a blood vessel, the paddy he got into.
1970		A. Sillitoe Start in Life (1979) 338: I’d get into a paddy and throw pots around.
1986		Beano Comic Library No. 96 38: Don’t get in such a paddy.
1999		Indep. 16 June 6: We shouldn’t get into a paddy about the decline of formal marriage.
2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 paddy n. 1) benny/eppy 2) the state of being one adopts on becoming irate.