subs. (old).—1. An empty-headed Justice of the Peace. [Cf. SHAKESPEARE, 2 Henry IV., iii. 2.] Whence (2) = a fool; also SHALLOW-LING and SHALLOWPATE (B. E. and GROSE).
1615. SYLVESTER, Tobacco Battered.
| Can wee suppose, that any SHALLOWLING | |
| Can find much Good in oft Tobacconing? |
1646. British Bellman [Harleian Miscellany, vii. 633]. Whores, when they have drawn in silly SHALLOWLINGS, will ever find some trick to retain them.
1900. F. E. GRAINGER (‘Headon Hill’), Caged! xxvi. The local SHALLOWS thought that this mode of entrance added to the dignity of the function.
3. (old).—A low-crowned hat; ‘a whip-hat’: whence LILLY-SHALLOW = a white whip-hat (GROSE and VAUX).
4. (costermongers’).—(a) The peculiar barrow used by street traders (also TROLLEY and WHITECHAPEL BROUGHAM: Fr. une bagnole); and (b) see quot. 1851.
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, i. 29. The square and oval SHALLOWS are willow baskets, about four inches deep, and thirty inches long, by eighteen broad. Ibid., i. 146. Two or three customers with their SHALLOWS slung over their back.
1875. GREENWOOD, Low-life Deeps, 153. Here they are after it—in vehicles for the greater part; in carts and ‘half-carts,’ and ‘SHALLOWS’ and barrows.
1876. C. HINDLEY, ed. The Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, 184. With a proviso that he did not go travelling in the country with his ‘SHALLOW.’
1891. Morning Advertiser, 30 March. The connexion between Lord Lonsdale’s travels … and his capacity to drive anything on wheels from a Pickford’s van to a costermonger’s SHALLOW, is, one would fancy, remote enough.
1896. G. A. SALA, London up to Date, 45. The free and independent costermonger, with his pal in the SHALLOW.
1899. Evening Standard, 13 March, 8, 2. ‘A China Episode.’ Mathew Leveret, a peripatetic dealer in crockery ware, was driving his pony and SHALLOW … laden with crockeryware of all kinds.
4. (tramps’).—See quots. and SHIVERING JEMMY.
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, i. 262. He scraped acquaintance with a ‘school of SHALLOW COVES’; that is, men who go about half-naked, telling frightful tales about shipwrecks, hair-breadth escapes from houses on fire, and such like aqueous and igneous calamities…. People got ‘fly’ to the ‘SHALLOW BRIGADE’; so Peter came up to London to ‘try his hand at something else.’
1869. GREENWOOD, The Seven Curses of London, xiv. The ‘SHALLER,’ or more properly ‘SHALLOW’ DODGE, is for a beggar to make capital of his rags and a disgusting condition of semi-nudity…. A pouncing of the exposed parts with common powder-blue is found to heighten the frost-bitten effect.
1877. RIBTON-TURNER, A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, 641. I have been a SHALLOW-COVE, also a high-flyer.
1893. Ripon Chronicle, 23 Aug. ‘A Queer Life Story.’ Billy Brum has been RUNNING SHALLOW at intervals in these parts for the past five years. By RUNNING SHALLOW I mean that he never wears either boots, coat, or hat, even in the depths of the most dismal winter.
1893. P. H. EMERSON, Signor Lippo, x. I only DO THE SHALLOW on the pinch. I shall have to come back to the nigger business, its more respectable. Ibid., x. One thing, I always go very ’spectable—clean collar, clean scarf, clean boots. It’s far better to go that way than SHALLOW.
1900. FLYNT, Tramping with Tramps, 240. One day he is a ‘SHALLOW COVE’ or ‘shivering Jimmy.’
TO LIVE SHALLOW, verb. phr. (thieves’).—To live quietly and in retirement, as when WANTED (q.v.).
