See quotation. Examples 1882–6, N.E.D.
1881. A “bucket-shop” in New York is a low “gin-mill,” or “distillery,” where small quantities of spirits are dispensed in pitchers and pails (buckets). When the shops for dealing in one-share or five-share lots of stocks were opened, these dispensaries of smaller lots than could be got from regular dealers were at once named “bucket-shops.”—N.Y. Ev. Post, Oct.
1886. See also Leeds Mercury, Dec. (N.E.D.).
1888. Inspector Byrnes was seized with another spasm of indignation against the bucket-shops [in New York] this morning.—Missouri Republican, Feb. 12 (Farmer).
1908. The firm had been engaged, for some time prior to its collapse, in running a “bucket shop.”—N.Y. Ev. Post, Dec. 24.
1909. [It is] notorious that bucket-shops and wild cat promoters generally find clergymen and college professors their most unresisting prey.—Id., April 29.
1910. What, by some peculiar and not wholly obvious analogy of thought, our people call a bucket-shop, is not only a gambling establishment pure and simple, but is in most cases a gambling establishment which pretends to be something else.—N.Y. Evening Post, April 4.
