phr. (stock exchange).—A warning cry that a stranger is in the ‘House.’
1887. G. D. ATKIN, House Scraps, 57. ‘So help me Got, Mo, who is he?’ ‘Instead of replying in a straightforward way, Mo raised his voice as loud as he could, and shouted with might and main: ‘FOURTEEN HUNDRED new fives!’’ ‘A hundred voices repeated the mysterious exclamation.’
1890. Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 26 April. The cry of ‘FOURTEEN HUNDRED’ is said to have had its origin in the fact that for a long while the number of members never exceeded 1,399; and it was customary to hail every new comer as the fourteen hundredth. It has, in its primary sense, long since lost significance, for there are now nearly three thousand members of the close corporation which has its home in Capel Court.
