Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a small child.

1966		in IUFA Folk Speech n.p.: Term for children: Curtain climber [HDAS].
1971–2		C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 202: curtain pullers, n. – little kids.
1975		L. Dills CB Slanguage.
1993		R.J. Dale Million Reasons 91: Look, I can tell you like the little curtain climber, so how about this— I’ll hire nighttime babysitters anytime you want to go out.
2004		Wkly World News 28 Oct. 17: Laura, I know at your age you might not look forward to changing diapers all over again and chasing some little curtain climber around the White House.

1. a scolding from a wife to her husband, after they have gone to bed (occas. vice versa, see cit. 1821); also attrib.

1611		Speed Hist. Great Britain IX xv §44: But the Curtaine-Sermons nightly enlarged vpon the same Text, many hym many times to lie awake .
1639		J. Taylor Juniper Lecture A4: I know you have heard of a Curtaine Lecture before now.
1655		E. Gayton Wil Bagnals Ghost 16: The scolds as have at Hicks-Hall bin indicted: / Their Curtain-Lectures, and their Morning Peales, / Are all reveng’d.
1675		C. Cotton Scoffer Scoff’d (1765) 192: What’s Harm in kissing a fine Child / [...] / That I must have this Curtain-Lecture?
1694		Congreve Double-Dealer II i: Remember I have a curtain lecture for you, you disobedient, headstrong brute!
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Curtain-Lecture. Womens impertinent Scolding at their Husbands.
1709		N. Ward Compleat and Humorous Account of Remarkable Clubs (1756) 98: Upon Thorns to be at Home with his Wife, for Fear he should not be early enough in his Bride’s Arms, to avoid a Curtain-lecture.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy II 242: And as a right Conjugal Tempter oft learns, / By loud Curtain Lectures, or Pillow Concerns, / Her Husband’s best Secrets.
1724		Swift ‘His Grace’s Answer’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 152: Your Spouse shall there no longer hector / You need not fear a Curtain-Lecture.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1739		R. Bull Grobianus 225: Nought proves more tedious than a Curtain-Lecture.
1768		Bath Chron. 8 Dec. 2: [advert] Curtain Lectures; or, Matrimonial Misery displayed in a Series of interesting Dialogues between Men and their Wives.
1772		G. Stevens ‘Here Goes’ Songs Comic and Satyrical 83: Some Wives read their mates / Curtain-Lecture debates.
1787		Burns Henpeck’d Husband in Works (1842) 122/1: The crouching vassal to the tyrant wife! [...] Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell!
1795		J. O’Keeffe Life’s Vagaries 40: What curtain lectures, perhaps a divorce.
1800		Sporting Mag. Aug. XVI 235/1: We fear from the bride’s fluency of speech, that the poor fellow will undergo the further discipline of a curtain-lecture.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		W. Combe Doctor Syntax, Wife (1868) 245/1: Yes, she may toss her head and hector, / But she shall have a curtain lecture: / I’ll make the saucy madam weep, / Believe me, ere she goes to sleep.
1831		‘Gallery of 140 Comicalities’ Bell’s Life in London 24 June 4/5: A Curtain lecture. ‘As usual, you drunken sot! Is this the way to come home to your affectionate wife and helpless child?’.
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 11 June n.p.: the whip wants to know How they settled it — by way of a curtain lecture?
1845		Bell’s Life in Sydney 25 Jan. 2/6: Rachel Hasset, a sharp, pert looking lady, with a countenance expressive of reading a curtain lecture.
1848		Thackeray Vanity Fair I 40: In a curtain lecture, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe.
1856		‘Q.K. Philander Doesticks’ Plu-ri-bus-tah 131: Calling him ‘my love,’ before folks, / When she got him in the bedroom, / And the door was closed behind them, / She was ‘some’ on curtain-lectures.
1862		E. de la Bédollière Londres et les Anglais 313/2: to read a curtain lecture, [...] se dit d’une femme qui gronde son époux couché auprès d’elle.
1880		Cincinnati Enquirier (OH) 14 Feb. 9/7: The husband [...] opens the door boldly; walks in witha slam-bang air [...] scares his wife clear out of her curtain lecture.
1881		Otago Witness (NZ) 2 Apr. 8/4: The old lady growled that she did not get her due proportion of the blanket, and between curtain lectures and the cold, Old Split-the-Blanket enjoyed anything but undisturbed rest.
1884		M.V. Fuller [title] Mrs Rasher’s Curtain Lectures.
1890		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘An Interim Injunction’ Sporting Times 11 Jan. 1: He now repents his fiction, for he suffers the infliction / Of a course of curtain lectures every night.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Jul. 32/2: You can hear the confidences of the two servants three partitions away, and you would think that the woman in the next room, who is giving her mere man a curtain-lecture, is in your own room – Babel is all over the house.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 16 Oct. 1/1: If the scribe is ten minutes over his allotted time he cops the curtain lecture.
1905		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Wedlock by Wire’ Sporting Times 6 May 1/3: Curtain lectures were unknown within his tent.
1939		D. Whipple Priory (2003) 226: Once she had been able to say what she wante to say in their bedroom. Curtain lextures are often the only ones a woman is allowed to give.

2. in non-marital context, a reprimand.

1920

N.Z. Truth 7 Feb. 6/4: Fred was subjected to the usual magisterial curtain lecture [...] and was admitted to a farm of probation.

3. a private scolding.

1966

C. Stead Cotters’ England (1980) 189: Aye and once I stole from Mother’s purse. You remember? And you gave me a curtain lecture.