Green’s Dictionary of Slang

socket n.

the vagina.

[UK]Mankind in Macro Plays line 140: If ye wyll putt yowr nose in hys wyffys sokett, / Ye shall haue forty days of pardon.
[UK]Jonson Gypsies Metamorphosed 8: Lay by your wimbles [...] or vsing your nimbles in diuing the pocketts and sounding the socketts of simper-the-Cocketts.
[UK]R. Brathwait Barnabees Journal III Q7: Having boldly thus adventur’d, / And my Sara’s socket enter’d.
[UK]J. Cotgrave ‘To His Mistress Desirous to Go to Bed’ Wits Interpreter (1671) 259: The socket, plays at out and in.
[UK] ‘Court Diversion’ in Wilson Court Satires of the Restoration (1976) 151: [Lady] Berkeley and her youthful lover knock it; The jilt is ne’er without a dildo in her pocket; Old earl’s too short, too small for such a socket.
[UK]‘Capt. Samuel Cock’ Voyage to Lethe 13: I took Possession of the Charming Sally and immediately fell to work upon her. The Main-Mast being a Long-side, we strove to heave it in [...] by greasing and working it to and fro [...] it went tolerably plumb into the Socket.
[UK]‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. 19: Burning-shame — practised upon Bodikins, by the Authorities, who station a man with a lighted candle day and night, with the supposed intention of placing it in a socket of a queer kind, as soon as is convenient.
[UK]Tilly Touchitt 42: Passing up the slippery sheath thus newly opened [...] piaston and socket work with a vengeance.
[UK]Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

In derivatives

socketing (n.)

the blackmailing of individuals involved in an adulterous relationship.

[UK]Liverpool Echo 18 Mar. 3/2: This ruffianly practice of ‘socketing’ which recalls to my mind a similar predicament [...] in one of our large Yorkshire towns where this blackmailing has become very prevalent.

In compounds

socket-money (n.)

1. a dowry.

[UK]B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Socket-money, Demanded and Spent upon Marriage.
[UK]New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
[UK]Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
[UK]Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 127: We’ll take her, be she wife or whore; But we must likewise come upon ye, By way of costs, for socket-money.

2. money paid by a man to his wife to placate her after he has been caught in an adulterous affair.

[UK]N. Ward London Spy XV 363: The only good they’ve done, they’ve put a sort of Socket-Money upon whoring, and themselves are the Collectors of the Tax: By which reason the price of Venery is advanc’d.
[UK]N. Ward Secret Hist. of Clubs 364: Nor indeed could [...] a Man of Honour marry a celebrated Beauty, or a great Fortune, but they would draw him in with a charming Epithalamium to pay them Socket-Money.
[UK]Covent Garden Mag. Mar. 95/2: He was discovered by Miss ——, who, unluckily opened the door, and espied him in the very scene of action; demanded Mrs. B ’s socket-money, which she refusing, high words ensuing [etc.].
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Socket-money [...] money paid for a treat, by a married man caught in an intrigue.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[Aus]Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 78: Socket Money, money extorted by threats of exposure.
[UK]Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 64: Chiffre, m. The price of an embrace; ‘socket-money’.

3. the payment given to a prostitute.

[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Socket-money a whore’s fee, or hire.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

4. (UK prison) money paid by a male prisoner to be allowed a conjugal visit.

Investigation at Ilchester Gaol 92/1: Was there any fixed price for the constable granting this indfulgence for a prisoner seeing his wife in his bed-room? —I have heard they paid sixpence or a shilling, which was called ‘socket money’.
A Peep into a Prison; or, The Inside of Ilchester Bastile 203/2: Did they give what is called socket money? [...] What was the sum you used to receive for allowing debtors to go upstairs with their wives? — 1 have had sixpence of some of the men.
[Ire]Freeman’s Jrnl (Dublin) 22 Dec. 2/3: The prisoner carroll and other boys [...] were next door, before that, looking for ‘socket money’ where a couple had been married .

5. hush-money.

[UK]London Standard 25 Aug. 3/1: Mr Flint and the lady proceeded down a turning [...] deeply engaged in conversation, when 4 lads came running up to them, and in a loud tone demanded some ‘socket money’.
[UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.
[UK]Sl. Dict. 301: [...] money extorted by threats of exposure. socket-money is perhaps one of the most terrible inflictions that can befall a respectable man.

6. money paid by an employee to treat his workmates in the event of his marrying or becoming a father.

J. Dunlop Philosophy of Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usag 146: At marriages and births ‘socket-money’ is due ; but on these occasions the party concerned is not obliged to treat the whole establishment, but only that department in which he himself is employed.
[Ire]Freeman’s Jrnl (Dublin) 25 June 4/6: [H]e did not see the girls do anything except run up and down [...] crying out for ‘socket money’ as ‘Nell Sherwood and Hugh Harkness had come home after being married’.
[UK]Leeds Mercury 8 Nov. 20/6: The money payed by a person getting married for his companions to drink [a] health.

In phrases

on the socket

practising blackmail.

[US]D. Runyon ‘Cemetery Bait’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 521: This Count Tomaso is on the socket, which is a way of saying his dodge is blackmail.