powdering tub n.
1. the sweating tub used for the cure of venereal disease; thus powdered adj., (temporarily) cured after using the tub.
Henry V II i: From the powdering-tub of infamy Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind, Doll Tearsheet she by name. | ||
Measure for Measure III ii: pom.: She hath eaten up all her beef, and she herself is in the tub [...] lucio: It must be so: ever your fresh whore and your powdered bawd. | ||
May-Day II v: Health? ’Sfoot, how mean you that? D’ye think I came lately out o’ th’ powdering tub? | ||
Island Princess V iii: Here flyes a poudring-tub, the meat ready roasted, and there a barrel pissing vinegar. | ||
New Merry Letany 2: From the powd’ring Tub of Justice Long [...] Libera nos. | ||
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) I Bk II 224: Their faces did glister like the key-hole of a powdering tub. | (trans.)||
Eng. Rogue I 330: I failed not to season him in one of the Cities Powdering-Tubs. | ||
Love in a Wood III i: Do you intend to change them, then, to Bridewell, or Longs powdering-Tub. | ||
London Spy V 114: If he be as Rotton as a Town Stallion, who has been twenty times in the Powdering-Tub. | ||
Fifteen Comforts of Cuckoldom 5: Meantime a Rubbers she with some had play’d, / And in the Powd’ring Tub was quickly laid. | ||
Lives of Most Noted Highway-men, etc. I 240: He was very seldom out of the Powdering-Tub. | ||
Democritus III 28: I shall not Rebuke you, but only wish the Lard may Love you, and the Lard may souse you, and Pickle you in the Powdering Tub of Repentance. | ||
Harlot’s Progress 6: As I from Powdering-Tub was hopping / Sometimes a Running, sometimes Stopping. | ||
Secret Hist. of Betty Ireland (9 edn) 27: His Worship [...] soon found he had met with a hotter Reception than he expected [and] was necessitated to go into the Powdering-Tub. | ||
Midas III ii: You’re cajol’d by a beggarly scrub / Who will rot in a powdering tub. | ||
Only True and Exact Calendar [title page] Miss Rowe [...] has been two or three Times in the Pickling Tub. | ||
Correct List of the Sporting Ladies [broadsheet] She has lately been in the pickling tub, but now is as sound as a trout. | ||
, , | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Pickle [...] in the pickling tub, in a salivation. [Ibid.] Powdering tub. The same as pickling tub. | |
Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785]. | ||
Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
2. the hospital for sexual diseases, near Kingsland, London.
Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Powdring-Tub, the Pocky Hospital at Kingsland near London. | ||
Comical Observer 1 7 Nov. Kingsland and other Powdering Tubs of Affliction. |
3. (UK Und.) shoes or boots.
‘Ax My Eye’ in New Cockalorum Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) II 25: I sports a hellish swellish / Coat [...] and a slashing dashing, / Stunning pair o’ pickling tubs. | ||
‘Ax My Eye’ Dublin Comic Songster 101: [as 1836]. | ||
Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open. |