Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(mainly Anglo-Ind.) a man living away from his wife; specifically one residing in India while his wife remains in Britain.

1854		E. Carlén Professor 154: The glass was rather greenish, and the curtains pretty much what might be expected in the establishment of a grass widower.
1861		Chamber’s Jrnl 9 Mar. 145/1: Seven of the party had each his wife in England; they were, to use the ordinary phrase of Indian society – grass widowers.
1878		[G. Graham] Life in the Mofussil II 100: my wife and I went out house-hunting; and we pitched upon one which the newly incorporated body of Municipal Commissioners and the Clergyman (who was a grass widower, his wife being at home) had taken between them.
1880		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 16 Oct. 13: [pic. caption] A Grass Widower Obtains Admittance to his Mother-in-Law and Wife’s Apartments by Disguising Himself as a Female.
1881		G.R. Aberigh-Mackay Twenty-one Days in India 173: I have resolved myself into a Special Commission, and I have sat upon grass-widowers in camera.
1893		‘T. Bland Strange’ Gunner Jingo’s Jubilee II 517: Upon the Major’s head was the Battery fatigue cap, wedge shaped. [...] A big rent on the opposite side was sewn as only a bachelor or a grass widower could sew it.
1893		Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 30 Aug. 4/3: Major Simpson is discovered, as the unhappy grass widower in the grasp of his motherin-law.
1911		Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 2 Aug. 8/2: Mrs. Nicolas [...] with a competent staff of grass widower assistants, very kindly undertook the arduous task of judging [the fancy dress].
1926		Y. Fitzroy Courts and Camps in India 194: The Brotherhood was composed of all the most devastating elements of the bachelor world – more, its rules do, I believe, forbid ‘open matrimony’ alone! Which though designed to restore the grass widower to the fold is, in effect, delightfully ambiguous.