Green’s Dictionary of Slang

c.1860, the buildings of the Victoria and Albert Museum (orig. the Kensington Museum and School of Art) in Brompton Road, London (demolished 1898); c.1975, the buildings of the Bethnal Green Museum.

1856		Globe (London) 30 June 4/2: Messrs Young are the perpetrators of the abominations with which the land of the ’51 Exhibition commissioners is now disfigured — ‘the Brompton Boilers,’ as thse precious constructions are known.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 100: Boilers the slang name given to the New Kensington Museum and School of Art, in allusion to the peculiar form of the buildings, and the fact of their being mainly composed of, and covered with, sheet iron.
1873		Sl. Dict. 90: Boilers the slang name given to the New Kensington Museum and School of Art, in allusion to the peculiar form of the buildings, and the fact of their being mainly composed of, and covered with, sheet iron. This has been changed, since the extensive alterations in the building, or rather pile of buildings, and the words are now the property of the Bethnal Green Museum.
1899		Daily Tel. 2 Apr. in Ware (1909) 49/2: As little is there room or reason for carting them (the pictures left to the nation by Sir Richard Wallace), off to South Kensington, especially so long as the administrative powers leave the ‘Brompton boilers’ in their present absolutely disgraceful condition.