subs. (trade).—1. Old cloth shredded for re-manufacture. [In allusion both to the swindle and to the ‘DUST’ or ‘flock’ produced by the disintegrating machine which is called a ‘devil.’ The practice and the name are old. Latimer, in one of his sermons before Edward the Sixth, treating of trade rascality, remarked that manufacturers could stretch cloth seventeen yards long, into a length of seven-and-twenty yards: ‘When they have brought him to that perfection,’ he continues, ‘they have a pretty feat to thick him again. He makes me a powder for it, and plays the pothicary. They call it flock-powder, they do so incorporate it to the cloth, that it is wonderful to consider; truly a good invention. Oh that so goodly wits should be so applied; they may well deceive the people, but they cannot deceive God. They were wont to make beds of flocks, and it was a good bed too. Now they have turned their flocks into powder, to play the false thieves with it.’ Popularised by Mr. Ferrand in a speech before the House of Commons, March 4, 1842 (Hansard, 3 S, lxi., p. 140) when he tore a piece of cloth made from DEVIL’S DUST, into shreds to prove its worthlessness.] Also SHODDY (q.v.).
1840. CARLYLE, Miscellanies, iv., 239. Does it beseem thee to weave cloth of DEVIL’S-DUST instead of true wool; and cut and sew it as if thou wert not a tailor, but the fraction of a very tailor?
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, II., p. 30.
1864. Times, 2 Nov. It is not many years since Mr. Ferrand denounced the DEVIL’S DUST of the Yorkshire woollen manufacturers; this DEVIL’S DUST arises from the grand translation of old cloth into new.
2. (military).—Gunpowder.
1883. HAWLEY SMART, Hard Lines, ch. i. One looks up at the snow-white walls … and then remembers grimly what a mess the DEVIL’S DUST, as used by modern artillery, would make of them in these days.
