Green’s Dictionary of Slang

powdering tub n.

also pickling tub
[SE powdering/pickling tub, the tub in which the flesh of dead animals was pickled or ‘powdered’]

1. the sweating tub used for the cure of venereal disease; thus powdered adj., (temporarily) cured after using the tub.

[UK]Shakespeare Henry V II i: From the powdering-tub of infamy Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind, Doll Tearsheet she by name.
[UK]Shakespeare 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.
[UK]Chapman May-Day II v: Health? ’Sfoot, how mean you that? D’ye think I came lately out o’ th’ powdering tub?
[UK]Fletcher Island Princess V iii: Here flyes a poudring-tub, the meat ready roasted, and there a barrel pissing vinegar.
[UK]New Merry Letany 2: From the powd’ring Tub of Justice Long [...] Libera nos.
[UK]Urquhart (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) I Bk II 224: Their faces did glister like the key-hole of a powdering tub.
[Ire]Head Eng. Rogue I 330: I failed not to season him in one of the Cities Powdering-Tubs.
[UK]Wycherley Love in a Wood III i: Do you intend to change them, then, to Bridewell, or Longs powdering-Tub.
[UK]N. Ward London Spy V 114: If he be as Rotton as a Town Stallion, who has been twenty times in the Powdering-Tub.
[UK]Fifteen Comforts of Cuckoldom 5: Meantime a Rubbers she with some had play’d, / And in the Powd’ring Tub was quickly laid.
[UK]A. Smith Lives of Most Noted Highway-men, etc. I 240: He was very seldom out of the Powdering-Tub.
[UK]‘Whipping-Tom’ 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.
[UK]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.
[Ire]K. O’Hara Midas III ii: You’re cajol’d by a beggarly scrub / Who will rot in a powdering tub.
[UK]Only True and Exact Calendar [title page] Miss Rowe [...] has been two or three Times in the Pickling Tub.
[UK]Correct List of the Sporting Ladies [broadsheet] She has lately been in the pickling tub, but now is as sound as a trout.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Pickle [...] in the pickling tub, in a salivation. [Ibid.] Powdering tub. The same as pickling tub.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

2. the hospital for sexual diseases, near Kingsland, London.

[UK]B.E. 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.

[UK]‘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.
[Ire] ‘Ax My Eye’ Dublin Comic Songster 101: [as 1836].
[UK]Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.