A town rowdy: persons of this class having adopted the fashion just described.
1840. In that living, moving, ranting band, the boys, negroes, loafers, and a new species of the same animal, familiarly known in the city of New York as soap-locks, took the lead, and the rear was brought up by dismissed office-holders, disappointed office-seekers, mustached Terriers, perfumed exquisites, with here and there a gentleman from both political parties, who had been drawn out by curiosity to witness their riproarious proceedings.—Mr. Watterson of Tennessee, House of Representatives, April 2: Cong. Globe, p. 376, App.
1840. The hostility between the Yankee soap locks and the Dutch musicians, in regard to the Ellsler serenade, has come to a happy termination.—Daily Pennant, St. Louis, Sept. 12.
1842. It is said that seven dandies and a soaplock have fallen in love with the beautiful mermaid exhibited at the Boston Museum.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, Oct. 28.
1844. Their husbands shall be men; not things, but men; not wasp-waisted coxcombs and tight-laced soap-lock dandies.—Mr. Duncan of Ohio, House of Repr., May 6: Cong. Globe, p. 517, App.
a. 1848. You will behave yourselves as men, patriots, and gentlemen should; and not like soaplocks and rowdies.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 164.
1850. I would give my first $100 fee to be in at the dissection of a “broken-hearted soap-lock heart.”—James Weir, ‘Lonz Powers,’ i. 31 (Phila.).
1852. There was something very ‘Bowery-boy’-ish in a question asked by one ‘soap-lock’ of another, who had been trying his wind on a lung-ometer in Chatham-square.—Knick. Mag., xl. 187 (Aug.).
1888. When I first came to this city, the dangerous class was the soap-lock.—Troy Daily Times, Feb. 3 (Farmer).
