or Brydport, subs. phr. (old).—The hangman’s rope. TO BE STABBED WITH A BRIDPORT-DAGGER = to be hanged: see HORSE’S NIGHTCAP and HEMPEN-FEVER.
1662. FULLER, Worthies, Dorset (I., 310). ‘Stab’d with a BRYDPORT DAGGER.’ That is, hang’d or executed at the Gallowes; the best, if not the most, hemp (for the quantity of ground) growing about Brydport.
1787. GROSE, A Provincial Glossary, etc. (1811), 67. Stabbed with a BRYDPORT DAGGER. That is hanged. Great quantity of hemp is grown about this town; and, on account of its superior qualities, Fuller says there was an ancient statute, now disused, that the cables for the royal navy should be made thereabouts.
1807. SOUTHEY, Espriella’s Letters, i., 35 (3 ed.). The neighbourhood is so proverbially productive of hemp, that when a man is hanged, they have a vulgar saying, that he has been stabbed with a BRIDPORT DAGGER.
