Green’s Dictionary of Slang

violent, aggressive or overpowering.

1760		Foote The Minor 42: No knock-me-down doings in my house [...] no rioters.
1773		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 80: Her character too, as a housekeeper, has been always decent, and she has had the address to prevent – ‘any knock-me-down doings in her house’.
1786		F. Pilon He Would be a Soldier III i: You bounce in all of a sudden, transported with rage [...] and with a knock-me-down countenance.
1835		Dickens ‘A Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle’ in Slater Dickens’ Journalism I (1994) 433: This here young gen’lm’n’s father – so I’m told, mind ye, – and the father o’ the young voman, have always been on very bad, out-and-out, rig’lar knock-me-down sort o’ terms.
1849		Bell’s Life in Sydney 22 Dec. 3/2: The Bench having looked on this knock-me-down doenment, decided that Mr. Edwards must pay the week’s wages.
1858		R.S. Surtees Ask Mamma 242: She was a great masculine knock-me-down woman, round as a sugar-barrel.
1865		R.S. Surtees Facey Romford’s Hounds 5: She was a great masculine knock-me-down looking woman [...] with a strongish shading of moustache on her upper lip.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 293: And Bloom of course with his knockmedown cigar putting on swank all over his lardy face.