Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bum n.²

a bailiff.

1653		Urquhart (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel (1922) II Bk V 71: Friar John, on the quay, was making woeful complaint before a sergeant [...] and a brace of bums, his assistants.
a.1661		‘Arsy Versy’ Rump Poems and Songs (1662) II 49: Though once by a Bum he was fouly trapand.
1672		J. Phillips Maronides (1678) VI 46: Fierce Gryphons all with armed gumms, / More terrible than Sheriffs Bumms.
1675		C. Cotton Scoffer Scoff’d (1765) 170: You Pair of Jove’s Bumbailiffs.
1680		‘The Poet’s Dream’ in Ebsworth Roxburghe Ballads (1893) VII:1 13: Men are enticed by the Bumms, / Who swear they ne’r will pay their summs.
1705–07		N. Ward Hudibras Redivivus II:6 9: O let the Louse forsake the Soldier, / To dwell upon the Bayliff’s shoulder! / And cursed be the horny Thumb, / That parts the Vermin and the Bum.
1713		W. King York Spy 33: The next Crew we met, were a parcel of Bums [...] Certainly a Bayliff is the properest shape wherein Men fancy Satan.
1728		T. Walker The Quaker’s Opera II i: The Bum who has the Writ against you, swears he’ll nap you.
1730		Hist. of Col. Francis Charteris 59: The Bums of both the Compters / Are plac’d to guard the Doors / Who Money take froim ev’ryone / Excepting their own Wh—res.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1749		B.M. Carew ‘The Oath of the Canting Crew’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 51: Never snitch to bum or beak.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 241: If a hangdog, call’d a bum-Baliff was suffer’d once to come, / He’d clear the chambers, courts, and yards.
1785		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: bum bailiff, a sheriff’s officer, who arrests debtors, so called perhaps from following his prey, and being at their bums, or as the vulgar phrase it, hard at their a—ses.
c.1790		‘Garry Own Naugh Glora’ Songs (publ. Jones) 5: We beat both Constables and Bums.
1801		Sporting Mag. Apr. XVIII 46/2: May your future lives [...] be undisturbed by the duns of landladies or dread of bum-baileys!
1804		Sporting Mag. May XXIV 138/1: The bums had dogged him to the office.
1812		J. Bell Jr. (ed.) Rhymes of Northern Bards 261: There was Preston the bailiff, Joe Craggs was his bum.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 347: A fig for each bum.
1825		C.M. Westmacott Eng. Spy I 215: But Sunday sets the pris’ner free, / He shows in Park, and laughs with glee / At creditors and Bum.
1831		Satirist (London) 10 Apr. 8/2: When are my small-clothes like a man running from a Bum Bailiff? When they are off.
1833		Bell’s Life in London 5 May 2/1: Hence vagabond! Creation’s scum! / [...] / May fate preserve each wretch, I say / From ruthless Bum’s unhallow’d clutches.
1836		Australian (Sydney) 8 Nov. 4/1: How oft in places, call’d back slum, / Where all things smelt of, and look’d rum. / We’ve lark’d, got gay, my faithful chum, / With song and grog, / And box’d each Charley, knave and bum, / My jolly dog.
1837		Thackeray Yellowplush Papers Works III (1898) 320: Jest as I came up to the door two of the bums jumped into the carridge.
1837		Marryat Snarleyyow I 192: Oh, I don’t know – sort of half-bred, long-shore chap – looks something between a bumbailey and a bumboatman.
1837		‘The Wide Awake Club’ in Bentley’s Misc. Feb. 209: My eye! how precious drunk he made Snatch’em, the bum, and I, one night as we pinned him coming home in his cab from the Opera to give a champaign supper at The Clarendon.
1842		S. Lover Handy Andy 115: Duck a taxman or harry a bum.
1845		Bell’s Life in Sydney 11 Oct. 2/5: The ‘Bums’ had laid a detainer on the goods and chattels.
1849		Sam Sly 19 May 3/2: We advise old M——e, the Bum, to look sharp, or Sam will touch him up.
1853		G.J. Whyte-Melville Digby Grand (1890) 282: By Gad! Dandy, we’re done! [...] if that’s not the two ‘bums’ walking upstairs, I’m a Scotchman.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 13: bum-bailiff, a sheriff’s officer.
1861		Bell’s Life in Sydney 20 Apr. 3/2: ‘A well-known leading Sydney hotel,’ into which he had that morning been compelled to put the ‘bums’, the tenant not being ready with his part in the domestic drama of the Rent Day.
1868		Sportsman 30 Jan. 2/1: Notes on News [...] Who, after this, would fear the ‘bum,’ or his tap on the shoulder, his ominous ‘you’re wanted’.
1870		Chester Chron. 10 Sept. 5/3: P.C. 12 said [...] he heard the prisoner and another man saying something about the ‘b— bum bailey’.
1878		J. Hatton Cruel London II 44: ‘A bum!’ he exclaimed.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 4 Apr. 18/4: The lessor and lessee were on bad terms with each other, and on one occasion, when the rent was a day or two overdue, the former put a bum. in possession of the fixings for the rent and then calmly went home to conduct family worship.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 13 May. 1/2: Both say an extra man for the subsequent repose of His Honor, the Bum-Bailiff.
1895		J. Caminada Twenty-Five Years of Detective Life I 64: A score of voices yelled out ‘Bumbs! Bailiffs! Yah!’.
1898		Binstead & Wells A Pink ’Un and a Pelican 135: Many of the ‘bums’ who were put into the Pelican were so desirous to be of service that they were rigged out and given a chance as waiters.
1906		E. Dyson Fact’ry ’Ands 214: Who should come sprintin’ upstairs but me nibs, pale’s er blessed egg, hair on end — fair dilly. The bums was in his house for rent.
1913		Truth (Perth) 18 Oct. 6/3: Whipped the bums into her dwellin’, / Sellin’ off of every stick.
1959		B. Naughton ‘A Skilled Man’ in Late Night on Watling Street (1969) 21: Bum bailiffs are in. Two of ’um [...] Say they won’t go till they get five quid in ready cash.

In compounds

bum trap (n.) [trap n.¹ (3)]

a bailiff or bailiff’s assistant.

1749		Fielding Tom Jones (1959) 197: The noble bum-trap, blind and deaf to every circumstance of distress [...] into the hands of the jailor resolves to deliver his miserable prey.
1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 180: Not a single bum-trap had crossed the threshold of Dickey’s door, in the way of private business, for many a long day past.
1838		Paul Pry 30 Sept. 182/1: [T]hose humane and generous feelings (peculiar to the office of Bum-trap).