or nobstick, subs. (workmen’s).—1. A non-society hand; DUNG (q.v.); a RAT (q.v.). Also, one who takes work under price, or continues at work while his fellows are on strike. (2) A master who does not pay his men at market rates.
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, iii. 220. I next went to work at a under-priced hatter’s, termed a KNOBSTICK’S.
1855. GASKELL, North and South, ch. xxv. ‘They would try and get speech o’ th’ KNOBSTICKS, and coax ’em, and reason wi’ ’em, and m’appen warn ’em off; but whatever came, the Committee charged all members o’ th’ Union to lie down and die, if need were, without striking a blow; and then they reckoned they were sure o’ carrying th’ public with them.’
1858. Notes and Queries, 1 S. ix. 373. In these days of strikes, turn-outs, and lock-outs we hear … much of KNOBSTICKS.
1860. SIR J. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH, Scarsdale, ii. ch. ii. By picketing the mills—by assaults on ‘KNOBSTICKS.’
1887. Contemporary Review, li. 238. The KNOBSTICK takes away the striker’s hope of bringing his employer to terms.
1887. Daily Telegraph, 1 July, 5. 8. Hundreds of windows at Dobson and Barlow’s foundry, in which are KNOBSTICKS, or ‘importations,’ were broken.
1891. Pall Mall Gazette, 25 July, p. 2, col. 2. The fact must be borne in mind that this advocate of physical force as an argument with KNOBSTICKS is repudiated by the organization of his fellow-workers.
