Green’s Dictionary of Slang

used in combs. pertaining to mendacious or untrustworthy speech or writing.

1689		T. Shadwell Bury Fair Prologue: Silly Grubstreet Songs worse than Tom Farthing.
1704		Swift Tale of a Tub 42: I am not unaware, how the Productions of the Grub-Street Brotherhood, have of late Years fallen under many Prejudices.
1711		Swift letter xxviii 21 Aug. Journal to Stella (1901) 274: We have only a Grub Street paper of it, but I believe it is true.
1723		C. Walker Authentick Memoirs of Sally Salisbury 92: It must be some Grub-Street Stuff.
1729		Swift ‘To Dr. Delany’ in Chalmers Eng. Poets XI (1810) 480/1: You may then boldly go in quest To find the Grub-street poet’s nest. [...] What e’er the noisy scoundrel says, It might be something in your praise: And praise bestow’d on Grub-street rhymes Would vex one more a thousand times.
1740		R. North Examen 323: Would one expect in Print [...] such Malice and Knavery as lies here, scarce fit for Midnight Grubstreet Rags?
1751		F. Coventry Hist. of Pompey Little II 209: I won’t have the Honour of my Ancestors besmeared with his Grubstreet Ink.
1795		A Fortnight’s Ramble through London 55: The productions of poor Grub-street authors.
1810		Chester Courant 13 Feb. 3/5: I must thiink it an insult to [...] my readers (whom this Grub-street hero dignifies with the titleof ‘dull Cestrians’.
1820		Slops Shave at a Broken Hone 10: The thickest pate Grub-street man of letters, / May puff his libel to the gaping mob.
1847		Morn. Advertiser (London) 19 Nov. 3/7: This ‘Advertiser’s scribe’. This most horn-mad of all the Grub-street tribe.
1852		Thackeray Henry Esmond (1898) 342: You are one of the pack of Grubb Street scribblers that my friend Mr. Secretary hath laid by the heels.