Green’s Dictionary of Slang

blowse n.

also blouse, blouz(e), blowes, blowesse, blows(e)y, blowz(e)
[? link to Du. blos, blush. Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dict. (1731) defines it as: ‘a fat, red-faced, bloted wench, or one whose head is dressed like a slattern’]

a slatternly woman, a prostitute.

[UK]T. Tusser Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1878) 43: Out trudgeth Hew make shift, with hooke & with line: Whiles Gillet, his blouse is a milking thy cow, Sir Hew is a rigging thy gate or the plow.
[UK]Misogonus in Farmer (1906) II iv: A mincing lass, a honeysweet blowse!
[UK]J. Hall Virgidemiarum (1599) Bk I 9: Nor list I sonnet of my Mistresse face, To paint some Blowesse with a borrowed grace.
[UK]Chapman All Fooles IV i: I will not hear a word; out, out upon thee! Wed without my advice, my love, my knowledge, Ay, and a beggar, too, a trull, a blowse!
[UK]R. Burton Anatomy of Melancholy 3.3.4.2: I had rather marry a faire one, and put it to the hazard, then be troubled with a blowze.
[UK]R. Brathwait Whimzies II 30: His bonny Blouze, or dainty doxie, being commonly a collapsed Tinkers wife, or some high way commodity.
[UK]Ford Lady’s Trial III i: Wench is your trull, your blouze, your dowdie.
[UK]Witts Recreations ‘Fancies & Fantasticks’ No. 106: Yet he’l be thought or seen; / So good as George-a-Green; / And calls his Blouze his Queen.
[UK]Greene & Lodge Lady Alimony IV ii: Doth your Mistress take us, you nitty-napty Rascal, for her Bordella’s Blouses?
[UK]J. Shirley Honoria and Mammon III i: Mammon is a Blouze, A deformed Gipsie.
[UK] ‘The Prentices’ Answer to the Whores’ Petition’ in Ebsworth Bagford Ballads (1878) II 510: We scorn such Pocky Jades, such dirty Blowses.
[UK]J. Phillips Maronides (1678) 133: All the dainty, Lazie blouses.
[UK]T. Duffet Empress of Morocco Act III: Sweet blouz you make us all look sadly, To see you still take on thus madly.
[UK]M. Stevenson Wits Paraphras’d 71: Such are thy Charms, did thou but send / When the three Blousses did content.
[UK] in D’Urfey Collin’s Walk canto 4 182: One evening to my Fathers House, Came a Young Tawney tatter’d Blowse [...] And at her Back a Kid that cry’d.
[UK]N. Ward London Spy XV 351: Neither could the good Woman [...] avoid, being new Christen’d by some Drunken Godfather or other, the name of [...] Dame Saucy, Goody Blowze, Gammer Tattle, or the like.
[UK] ‘Robin & Nan’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) II 129: Now, said he, my charming blowsy, / Let us love and banish fear.
[UK]N. Ward Hudibras Redivivus II:7 20: So the old Babylonian blouze, And her demure fanatic Spouse.
[UK]‘Phoebe Crackenthorpe’ Female Tatler (1992) (39) 92: Joan the blowze, nay ev’n the great red-haired wench in Cheapside, make horrid complaints against him.
[UK]N. Ward Poetical Entertainer I 39: As oft as the Adult’rous Blowze Could feign a Lye to cheat her Spouse.
[UK] in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy I 5: Adieu to the Knight [...] that keeps a Blowz, And beats his spouse. [Ibid.] V 349: Sly Spouses with Blouses, grave Horners, in Corners. [Ibid.] 194: May the Drone of my Bag never hum, / If I fail to remember my Blowze.
[UK]A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 203: Blowes, a mistress, also a whore.
[UK]View of London & Westminster (2nd part) 41: [in a list of prostitutes] Miss Blouze, a Vintner’s Daughter [Is Visited] By a Nobleman.
[UK]Harlot’s Progress 56: Bess Lemmox served the Wine, the Blowse, / Star’d at the Pr—st, and knit her Brows.
[UK]Cleland Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1985) 68: This Blouze had left her place in the country for a bastard.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: A blowse, or blowsabella, a woman whose hair is dishevelled, and hanging about her face; a slattern.
[UK]F. Pilon He Would be a Soldier II ii: Has Doll Blouze been with the parish officers?
[UK]‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow 49: But what’s very odd, the young blouze, / Each night puts the yard in her entry.
[UK]Sporting Mag. June X 175/2: In the belle or the blowze – in the pert or the prim.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 183: Blowsey Suke, in the rear, was the bridesmaid to her friend betsey.
[UK] in Flash Casket 97: [song title] Moll Blowse of Saffron Hill.
[UK]Halliwell Dict. Archaic and Provincial Words I 188/1: Blouse... a woman with hair or head-dress loose and disordered, or decorated with vulgar finery.
[UK]E.V. Kenealy Goethe: a New Pantomime in Poetical Works 2 (1878) 336: Tell-tale, Jillet, Vagrant, Fibber, / Blouze, Coquette, Slut, Gaptooth, Cow.
[Aus]Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 1: Blowsey - A word applied to a coarse wench, or rough woman.
[UK]A. Morrison Tales of Mean Streets (1983) 60: Blowses in feathered bonnets bawled hilarious obscenity at the jiggers.