subs. (popular).—A policeman. Though possibly not derived from, popularised by the fact that the Metropolitan Police Act of 1828 was mainly the work of Mr., afterwards Sir Robert Peel. Long before that statesman remodelled the police, however, the term ‘BOBBY the beadle’ was in use to signify a guardian of a public square or other open space. There seems, however, a lack of evidence, and examples of its literary use prior to 1851 have not been discovered. At the Universities the Proctors are, or used to be, called BOBBIES.
1851. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, I. 16. It is often said in admiration of such a man that he could muzzle half a dozen BOBBIES before breakfast!
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, I. 40. ‘But the worst of hair is,’ they add, ‘that it is always getting cut off in quod, all along of muzzling the BOBBIES.’
1860. DICKENS, The Uncommercial Traveller, iii. They don’t go a headerin’ down here, wen there an’t no BOBBY nor gen’ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.
1880. Punch, No. 2038. Going round a corner and crying, BOBBY! BOBBY! BOBBY! when he saw a Proctor.
1884. Punch, July 26, 41, 2.
| But oh, for the grip of the ‘BOBBY’S’ hand | |
| Upon his neck that day. |
1899. The Mirror, Aug. 26, 7, 2. On the back seat was perched the perfidious Amelia Ann, the lust of conquest clearly written upon her sinful and perspiring face. She had put her cat in the birdcage, its former occupant being, I presume, inside the cat…. In this order the ghastly procession moved off, to the evident amusement of a ‘BOBBY,’ whose beat seems to include nothing beyond the area-railings of the opposite house.
1899. R. WHITEING, No. 5 John Street, xxi. That ’s why they always have so many lobsters an’ BOBBIES abaht.
