Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a punch in the stomach, a ‘blow in the wind’; thus bellowsing, n. winding in order to kill [bellows n. (1)].

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1850		Fast Man 14:1 n.p.: If poor George Wynne had been alive, would’nt he have given you a bellowsing about this game.
1856		Novels and Tales n.p.: A sigh of the kind which is called by the lower classes a bellowser [F&H].
1868		‘Six Years in the Prisons of England’ in Temple Bar Mag. Nov. 539: ‘Locusing’ is putting a chap to sleep with chloroform, and ‘bellowsing’ is putting his lights out. In other words, drugging and murder.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1889		Times-Democrat (New Orleans, LA) 9 July 3/6: Prize Ring Slang [...] ‘Bellowser,’ a blow on the ‘mark,’ which is [...] the soft spot well below the breast bone.

2. (Aus./UK Und.) a sentence of lifetime transportation; thus knap/nap a bellowser, to be transported for life [such a sentence ‘takes one’s breath away’].

1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 279: A man transported for his natural life is said to [...] have knap’d a winder, or a bellowser.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1835		Metropolitan Mag. 14 330: I tell you what, Jack, if they would let me off now for a lifer, I mean a bellowser, I shouldn't thank them.

3. one who is sentenced to transportation for life.

1836

J.F. O’Connell Eleven Years in New Holland 42: Capt. Rossi’s eyes dilated when a bellowser*, a flash blowen, entered/ [note] *Person under life sentence.