subs. (common).—A four-wheeled cab. Cf., SULKY.
ENGLISH SYNONYMS.—Birdcage; blucher; bounder; fever-trap; flounder-and-dab (rhyming slang); four-wheeler; groping hutch; mab (an old hackney); rattler; rumbler.
FRENCH SYNONYMS.—Un bordel ambulant (common = a walking brothel); un char numèroté (popular); un flatar (thieves’); un foutoir ambulant (= a fuckery on wheels); un mylord (popular).
1870. Orchestra, 21 March. A recent enigmatical bill-poster on the walls, with the device ‘Hie, Cabby, Hie!’ turns out to be a Patent Cab Call—an ingenious sort of lamp-signal for remote hansoms and GROWLERS.
1873. Land and Water, 25 Jan. The knacker’s yard is baulked for a time, while the quadruped shambles along in some poverty-stricken GROWLER.
1883. Daily Telegraph, 8 Jan., p. 5, c. 3. But while a great improvement has been made in hansoms of late years, the four-wheeler or GROWLER is still as a rule a disgrace to the metropolis.
1890. Daily Graphic, 7 Jan., p. 14, c. 1. What with hansom cabs and GROWLERS and private broughams; what with bonded carmen’s towering waggons.
1891. Globe, 15 July, p. 1, c. 3. Adapting the words of Waller to the condition of many of our GROWLERS—
| The cab’s dull framework, battered and decayed, | |
| Lets in the air through gaps that time has made. |
TO RUSH (or WORK) THE GROWLER, verb. phr. (American workmen’s).—See quot. [GROWER = pitcher.]
1888. New York Herald, 29 July. One evil of which the inspectors took particular notice was that of the employment by hands in a number of factories of boys and girls, under ten and thirteen years, to fetch beer for them, or in other words TO RUSH THE GROWLER.
