Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the vagina; note euph. extrapolation in cit. 1890.

[1661		‘Loves Tenement’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) V 26: Nay, rather than a Tenant want, / I’ll let it for an houre].
1699		N. Ward ‘The Insinuating Bawd’ in Writings (1704) 80: Your Extasies of Joy, with a Pox to ’em [...] have struck up such an unextinguishable Fire in my most Pleasurable Apartment.
1702		Cibber She Would and She Would Not V i: Why then, in plain Terms, Let me a Lease of your Tenement – Marry me.
c.1719		‘A Tenement to Let’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) I 218: I have a Tenement to Let, / I hope will please you all / And if you know the Name of it, / ’Tis called Cunny Hall.
1723		C. Walker Authentick Memoirs of Sally Salisbury 113: Nor had the good Lady of the Tenement forgot to introduce herself, and three or four of her neatest Girls.
1733		Laugh and Be Fat 13: The Merchant, not long since took of me a very pleasant little Tenement, which he was to occupy without any Let, Hindrance, or Molestation.
1768		Gentleman’s Bottle-Companion 41: I have a tenement to let, / ’Twill please both great and small, Sir.
1788		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 82: She has her best apartment ready for any one that is master of five guineas [...] her limbs [...] form a thousand true lovers knots, first to facilitate the entrance into her apartment, and then to keep the enraptured lodger there as long as possible.
1790		‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow 44: I have a tenement to let, / [...] /I call it Sportsman’s Hall, sir.
1833		‘The Jolly Pilgrim’ in Swell!!! or, Slap-Up Chaunter 10: My tenement is brittle, / And is, I fear, too little.
1835		‘Sportsman’s Hall’ in Rumcodger’s Coll. in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) IV 249: I have a tenement to let, / It will please both great and small, sir, / And if you’d know the name of it, / I call it Sportsman’s hall, sir.
1890		C. Hindley Vocab. and Gloss. in True Hist. of Tom and Jerry 154: It is said that the ‘widows cap,’ denotes there are Apartments to Let!

2. the widow herself.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 23/1: C.18.

3. a widow’s weeds.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: House or Tenement to Let, a Widows Weeds, or Atchievement [i.e. a sign bearing the dead man's armorial bearings] marking the Death of a Husband set up on the outside of the Mansion.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: House, or Tenement, to Let. A widow’s weeds; also an atchievement marking the death of a husband, set up on the outside of a mansion: both supposed to indicate that the dolorous widow wants a male comforter.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1788].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue [as cit. 1788].
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 113/2: Bill of sale, widow’s weeds, house to let.