Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus./N.Z.) liquor sold without a licence, often through a sly-grog shop; thus sly-groggery, sly-grog hut, sly-grog joint, sly-grog shanty, sly-grog tent, an illicit saloon or liquor store; grogger, sly-grogger, sly-grogress, sly-groggist, sly-grog man, sly-grog runner, sly-grog seller, an illicit liquor seller; sly-grogging, sly-grog selling, selling liquor illegally.

1825		Hobart Town Gaz. (Tas.) 14 Jan. 2/2: More liquor and beer are vended in what are elegantly called ‘Sly Grog-shops,’ than in all the Licensed Houses [...] They may swear and play at cards as much as they please, and as long as they chuse, because the sly grog man is in their power!
1826		Hobart Town Gaz. 11 Nov. 2/4: [headline] Sly Grog Sellers.
1830		Sydney Monitor 7 July 2/4: [headline] Dire Work among the Remanent Sly Grog Sellers. A barrel of gunpowder [...] with all the casks of rum, wine, porter, and beer, and the measures into the bargain placed thereon, with the sly grog sellers all seated on top, on being fired, could scarcely have produced greater consternation .
1838		Sydney Monitor 15 June 2/3: Those dens of impurity, the sly grog huts [...] are portraits, practical scenes, of the low brothels of Wapping and Portsmouth.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 17 Oct. 2/2: The inference to be drawn from the report is that I keep [...] a sly grog shop.
1847		[A. Harris] (con. 1820s) Settlers & Convicts 89: At this period [...] a sly grog seller could always afford to pay the fine, heavy as it was, out of his profits for three months.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 20 June 4/1: His first step was to become a ‘sly grog’ informer.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes I 186: A ‘sly-grog shop,’ where all sorts of liquors are drunk without licence. [Ibid.] I 240: Drunkenness was introduced by sly-grog-sellers. [Ibid.] III 353: Sly grog-selling was attempted on a large scale.
1853		C.R. Read What I Heard, Saw, and Did 169: He is the greatest sly grog seller in the diggings.
1858		‘A. Pendragon’ Queen of the South 131: I charge that man, Hockey [...] with sly-grog-selling.
1862		A. Polehampton Kangaroo Land 55: The array of innocent-looking ginger-beer bottles was only a blind to the profitable, though hazardous and illicit trade of ‘sly grog’ selling.
1862		Sydney Morn. Herald 29 Nov. 2/5: If the measure were passed into law we should have sly grog shanties over the whole colony, where not only wine and beer could be obtained, but every other kind of liquors and spirits.
1873		Sydney Morn. Herald 8 May 3/6: They are not a benefit to our colonial wine trade, and they are, in nine cases out of ten, sly grog shanties.
1874		Illus. Police News (London) 31 Jan. 4/3: Janes the ‘sly grog shop man’ had sworn that he had met Luie at Ballarat.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Feb. 2/1: Have the police nothing better to do than to vamp up trumpery cases against petty offenders [...] for sly grog selling, or is this another way of adding to their reputation by the number of convictions they obtain?
1881		Bulletin (Sydney) 26 Mar. 8/4: There was an active officer and there was a sly-grog shanty, and the shanty being ‘sly’ and the owner of it ‘fly,’ no conviction had been recorded against him.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Mar. 7/4: There have been several ways of making money in New Zealand, besides sod-fencing and sly grog-selling, but perhaps the best little haul ever made in the good old days, or since, was that by which a man who kept a small seed shop in Dunedin rose to affluence.
1887		Cairns Post (Qld) 11 May 2/7: Some people in our office don’t know the difference between an officer of Excise and a suspected sly groggist.
1888		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Robbery Under Arms (1922) 188: The shutting off of public houses led to sly grog tents, where they made the digger pay a pound a bottle for his grog.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 26 July 9/4: The people of N.S.W. are not more sober than the Victorians, but they drink more ‘sly’ and doctored grog which pays no duty. Scores of thousands of gallons of white spirit have been secretly distilled in George-street, Sydney, under the noses of the police.
1890		Queenslander (Brisbane) 11 Oct. 679/4: The late raid made by the excise officers on the sly grog shanties at Main Camp.
1891		Bird o’ Freedom (Sydney) 14 Mar. 1/3: How many sly-grog sellers are victimising the 7000 mechanics and navvies at present employed on railway works?
1895		H. Lawson ‘Middleton’s Peter’ in Roderick (1972) 261: The reader may doubt that a ‘sly grog shop’ could openly carry on business on a main government road.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Feb. 10/4: No policeman in Tassy-land captures his sly-groggist until he has ‘earned his fine.’ [Ibid.] 17 Nov. 27/2: [A] deputation of the pub-keepers and their friends told Bigjohn, t’other day, that there were at least 80 sly-groggeries in the two towns.
1900–01		H. Lawson ‘A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs’ in Roderick (1972) 391: He lived where he happened to be in a town hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog shanty.
1903		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 July 1/2: A friendly society, and a sectarian one at that, has indirectly assisted to run a sly grog-shop.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 7 May 1/1: The slops only struck the fringe of the shypooeries on the Jandakot track [and] the gaoling of one grogger scarcely affected the output oi potheen.
1906		Gadfly (Adelaide) 11 Apr. 18/2: If these are closed through the local-option movement, Rev. Boniface will have to turn the Church Office into a sly grog shanty, with Mrs. Nicholls serving the drinks with a seductive smile, and Harry Gainford keeping ‘nit’ for the police.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 11 Aug. 11/1: The old publican, as a rule, didn’t serve infants like these because he feared to lose his license, but the sly-grog man [...] has no license to lose. His chief disadvantage is that if a client gets really tight he has to be secluded [...] if it’s a drinkery that hasn’t squared the police. [Ibid.] 13 Oct. 18/4: The sly-grogger must necessarily have his own avenues of supply.
1910		Sydney Morn. Herald 17 Mar. 6/5: [headline] Sly Grog Selling. The Stroud and Dungog police [...] made a raid upon a sly grog shanty near the Ram station.
1911		Marlborough Express (N.Z.) 3 June 3/4: That battery was a travelling sly-grog shop of the most depraved type.
1912		Truth (Wellington) 22 June 1/4: He has a snout for the sly grog joint.
1914		Eve. Post (Wellington) 17 Apr. 8/7: [caption] ‘Sly Grog-Selling’ [...]The police alleged that Mrs Darby did a large trade in selling liquor.
1916		N.Z. Observer (Auckland) 29 Jan. 12/1: [cartoon caption] We’re doing braver work sniping sly-groggers.
1920		B. Cronin Timber Wolves 77: Timber Bend had a reputation for sly-grog selling.
1920		West Australian (Perth, WA) 6 Jan. 6/5: Mr. Weincke said that every sheet of iron at the Katherine was a sly grog shanty and one could get whisky—green, red, black, or blue.
1921–2		(?) H. Lawson ‘Last Rose of Winter’ in Roderick (1972) 904: Bottles of good prohibition whisky bought from our favourite sly-grogress.
1924		C.J. Dennis ‘Crusaders’ in Chisholm (1951) 82: ‘Now, up the street, ’ere is a littl sink / Uv sin that does a traffic in strong drink.’ ‘Sly grog?’ ’e arsts.
1930		Gippsland Times (Va.) 3 Feb. 4/1: YOUR CHOICE IN SHORT IS THIS - A clean licensed trade—or sordid sly-groggeries with their associated evils.
1934		Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld) 1 Mar. 10/3: Spider Martin got the horrors in a sly-grog joint [...] and chased himself twenty miles through thick scrub with a rusty tomahawk.
1936		‘Banjo’ Paterson Shearer’s Colt 66: The Chinaman used to visit the sheds with his hawker’s cart which was really a travelling sly-grog shop.
1936		(con. 1830s–60s) ‘Miles Franklin’ All That Swagger 49: He thought of a fellow lag who kept a sly grog shop in the ranges.
1936		Western Mail (Perth, WA) 23 July 11/3: The township was only in its infancy and consisted of a few bough sheds, one of which was a sly grog shanty [...] Imagine the dismay of the sly-grogger when he headed for his bush store-room [...] and saw his little hiding hole in flames!
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 328: The police swooped round silently and collected a group of sly-grog sellers.
1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. 68: Sly-groggery, a sly-grog shop.
1942		Cairns Post (Qld) 1 Apr. 1/7: The sly groggery has died the death most dreaded in our hot clime — the death of thirst.
1943		J.A.W. Bennett ‘Eng. as it is Spoken in N.Z.’ in AS XVIII:2 Apr. 89: Sly-grog was originally an Australian term for illicit liquor; the verbal noun, sly-grogging, for the traffic in this liquor, is worth recording.
1949		R. Park Poor Man’s Orange 27: There was already a crowd in the lane outside the sly-grog shop.
1951		Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 318: I believe he’s in the sly grog racket up to the neck.
1952		Mail (Adelaide) 2 Feb. 4S/2: It was rather a cross between a sly groggery and a pawn broker’s shop.
1953		K. Tennant Joyful Condemned 34: Truck drivers, sly-grog runners, stable hangers-on, had much to do with this import business.
1961		T. Ronan Only a Short Walk 52: Snorter might talk over a beer in an East Perth sly-groggery, but not in a prison cell.
1961		K. Cook Wake in Fright [ebook] If we did close ’em [i.e. the pubs] at ten there’d only be a lot of sly grog shops spring up.
1962		(con. 1890s) T. Ronan Deep of Sky 93: Once a permanent camp got established [...] it soon became possible to buy a drink there. Once the sly-grogging got too willing, the seller, thereof was generally told to build decent premises and apply for a hotel license.
1963		C. Rohan Down by the Dockside 187: In the big room at the back was the slyg, (beer 7s. 6d. a bottle).
1965		W. Dick Bunch of Ratbags 139: We left Ricky, Bootlace and the boys when they went off to a sly grog about eleven-thirty.
1968		J. Alard He who Shoots Last 52: I’ll get a refill at da sly grog joint.
1972		B. Wannan Folklore of the Aus. Pub 129: Sly-grog: liquor sold illegally.
1981		J. Charles Black Billy Tea 30: A sly grog shop / Can’t call a cop, / So that fellow will never complain.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 104/2: sly grog selling grog illicitly, usually after closing time, and thus compulsively popular in era of the six o’clock swill, but goes back to our beginnings, indeed to 1829 in Australia.
1990		Tupper & Wortley Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Sly grog. Illegally prepared alcohol. A term arising from past licensing restrictions but surviving still in prisons where all alcohol is prohibited.
1993		Sydney Morn. Herald 19 Apr. 2/1: The Paddington terrace house [...] in the 1950s was an infamous sly-grog den [...] And while ever taxi-driver in town knew where these sly-grog joints were, 27 Caledonia Street was the best.
1996		(con. 1950s) in P. Doyle Get Rich Quick (2004) 9: There was a church [...] and an old duck who sold sly grog.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 48: sly grog, the illegal alcohol sold in sly grog huts and sly grog tents during the 19th century and even later.
2001		(ref. to 1950s) C. Lee Eight Bells & Top Masts 144: Ma Gleeson’s became the most famous sly grogger in the whole wide world .
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 192: sly grog Illicitly sold liquor from earliest days of European settlement. Reached a pitch during the middle decades of C20, when some areas voted dry, banning liquor, and liquor was not for legal sale after 6 pm, provoking both the six o’clock swill and the subsequent sly-grogging ANZ.
2004		(con. 1960s-70s) T. Taylor Top Fellas 35/1: The sly-grogs were pubs or private houses where the booze flowed at all hours, regardless of the law — on the sly, as it were.
2006		R. Hughes Things I Didn’t Know (2007) 171: Basically, though, it was an upscale sly-grog joint. Vadim had an under-the counter stock of red wine [...] vodka, passable brandy and drinkable Scotch.
2020		D. Whish-Wilson Shore Leave 33: [H]elping Des Ryan’s father with his sly-grog operation.