Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an argument, a disturbance.

a.1790		H.T. Potter New Dict. Cant (1795) n.p.: bobbery a disturbance.
1796		N-Y Mag. Jan. 6: One of them told me with much satisfaction, that his wife had bought him a fourth son, and added, with an air expressive of gratitude, My wife too muchey good, she have catchey four bull child; mon mon* I think that cow child, he makey too much bobbery.† Joss love me, cause I makey he much tsin.‡ [footnote: * Mon mon is by and by. †Bobbery – cry too much. ‡Tsin tsin – worship].
1816		‘Quiz’ Grand Master, or, Adventures of Qui Hi? in Hindostan 48: The muse now blushes to disclose / The bobbery that here arose [OED].
1818		London Guide 169: At the top of Bishopsgate Street and Norton Falgate, six or seven thieves were making a bubbery, as they always do thereabouts on Saturday and Sunday evenings.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 181: I’m the boy for a bit of a bobbery.
1827		Sydney Gaz. 15 Aug. 3/1: ‘Please your Worship,’ said the complainant, ‘I was on duty last night, when this here man came up to me quite tossticated in liquor, kicked up a ‘bobbery’, [and] swore all kinds of ‘outdacious’ oaths’.
1834		‘Jack Downing’ Andrew Jackson 228: They’d’ve kick’d up a rale bubbery, and’ve thrown the fat intu the fire in a jump.
1844		J.W. Kaye Peregrine Pultuney I 122: ‘I turn round [...] thirty, forty men come — bobberee — poor man — what do?’.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 4 July 3/1: Leary was known to have been [...] kicking up a bobbery about some robbery.
1848		J.H. Stocqueler Oriental Interpreter 34/2: BOBBERY, BOBERY WALLAH, noise, a noisy fellow. The word is properly Bapré.
1848		Talfourd & Seymour Sir Rupert, the Fearless I iii: Come, come, my friends, pray cease this row and bobbery.
1848		Geelong Advertiser (Vic.) 11 Nov. 1/1: [T]he bobbery he kicksup over it, shews he’s in arnest.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 17 Jan. 3/1: Charged with having kicked up a bobbery at [...] the Victoria Theatre.
1857		D. Forbes Dict. Hindustani & Eng. II 103/2: O father! b?p-re! an exclamation used, especially by the vulgar, when under affliction, whence the Anglo-Indian word bobbery! noise, disturbance, &c., so familiar to the English [Ibid.] 193/2: O father, father! b?p-re-b?p! whence the ridiculous word bobbery, disturbance, &c., but which is only used by the English and their servile imitators.
1867		W.H. Smyth Sailor’s Word-Bk (1991) 114: Bobbery. A disturbance, row, or squabble; a term much used in the East Indies and China.
1873		J. Mair Hbk of Phrases 97: Bobbery, a squabble; a row.
1875		Reynolds’s Newspaper 27 June 5/2: Messers. Moody and Sankey have been the innocent cause of all this bobbery.
1881		Times of India 15 June 2/3: This is the origin of the present ‘bobbery’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Oct. 12/4: And the magistrate tells her he believes all she says, but then, what’s the use of making a bobbery over such a trifling piece of business.
1891		B. Mitford Weird of Deadly Hollow – Tale of the Cape Colony 32: What’s all the bobbery about now, mother?
1891		Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 29 Apr. 7/3: Now and again some globe-trotting politician [...] will try to raise a bobbery.
1905		‘John Gilbert (Bushranger)’ ‘Banjo’ Paterson Old Bush Songs 36: Although they make a bobbery / About our tricks we have never done a tip-top thing in robbery.
1919		‘Sax Rohmer’ Dope 129: ‘Allee lightee,’ he murmured. ‘No bhobbery. Allee peaceful fellers.’.
1924		Galsworthy White Monkey 295: In this bobbery she oughtn’t to be left.
1933		S. Griffiths Rolling Stone on the Turf 138: One old gentleman sent his bearer (native valet) to find out what all the ‘bobbery’ was about.
[1992		Australian Mag. 10-11 Oct. 8/1: There they go, all chasing the dog-paddling deutschmark - the freestyle franc, the plunging peseta, the lolloping lira, followed by a host of lesser currencies - the doddipol of Denmark, the bobbery of Belgium, the snoddy of Switzerland].
1997		Share Slanguage.

2. a party, an entertainment.

1875

‘Aliph Cheem’ Lays of Ind (1905) 3: Vowing this was a deuce / Of a swell bobberee.

3. (also bobberee) a hoax or trick, esp. if illegal.

1912

E. Pugh City Of The World 259: ’Alf o’ them there gilt-edged barneys as you read about in the newspapers – the big bank scoops that talk in five or six figures o’ speech [...] Well, them there is the sort of high bobberees as Jerry Manders works.