Green’s Dictionary of Slang

old gooseberry n.

the Devil.

[UK]Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
[UK]W.E.A. Axon Billy O’ Bent’s Berryin’ 3: Happen yo win foind some mischief, for if ever there wur two uv Owd Gooseberry’s childer, it’s thee an’ Red Tom.
[UK]Sl. Dict.
[Ind]H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 3: Luckily [...] they were not all Darby Doyles, or Micky Quinlans! If they had, there would have been old gooseberry to pay!

In phrases

like old gooseberry (adv.)

very fast.

[UK]Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 684/1: —1865.
play (up) old gooseberry (v.) (also ...old Boguy)

to cause trouble, to ‘play the devil’, ‘play the deuce’.

[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Gooseberry. he playd up old Gooseberry among them. This is said of a person who by force or threats suddenly quells any disturbance.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn).
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK]‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress 22: SANDY’S the boy, if once to it they fall, / That will play up old gooseberry soon with them all.
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
F. Saunders Life in N.-Y. 12: That ‘Morning Herald’ has played old gooseberry with the house.
[UK]‘Alfred Crowquill’ Seymour’s Humourous Sketches (1866) 27: Sit still! for ve are just now in the current, and if so be you go over here, it’ll play old gooseberry with you.
[UK]R. Barham ‘Bloudie Jacke’ in Ingoldsby Legends (1842) 180: All the people of Shrewsbury / Playing old gooseberry / With your choice bits of taste and vir tù.
[UK]Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit (1995) 598: I’ll play Old Gooseberry with the office, and make you glad to buy me out at a good high figure, if you try any of your tricks with me.
[UK]Peeping Tom (London) 9 34/1: ‘[P]laying up old gooseberry with that tight little frigate Madam James’.
[Aus]Bell’s Life in Sydney 14 June 3/3: She began to get uproarious [...] and, in a word, ‘played up old gooseberry’.
[UK]Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
[UK]G.A. Sala Quite Alone III 133: Vy did the hinspector ’ave me up before the commisioners, and play old Gooseberry with me? Because he were jealous.
[UK]J. Greenwood Seven Curses of London 293: Wind and rain are their worst enemies [...] and play ‘old gooseberry’ with the bush-dwellings.
[UK]‘George Eliot’ Middlemarch III 174: By Jove, Nick, it’s you! [...] five-and-twenty years have played old Boguy with us both!
[UK]Globe (London) 12 July 2/2: We all know his capacity for playing old goosberry with things in general [F&H].