Billy Barlow

English

Etymology

Named after a real Billy Barlow, who (according to Hotten; see reference) was a well-known street character around the East End of London, and died in Whitechapel Workhouse.

Noun

Billy Barlow (plural Billy Barlows)

1. (UK, obsolete) A clown who performs in the streets.
   • 1960, Bill Wannan, A Treasury of Australian Humour, page 40:

     […] for at an election meeting in East Maitland in 1845 William Lipscomb, the local wit, said of the squatters that 'so far from being wealthy, they had produced more Billy Barlows than any other class'.

   • 2009, Dan Michael Worrall, The Anglo-German Concertina: A Social History, volume 1, page 49:

     […] as Jerry White notes in his history of London in the nineteenth century: There were the clowns or “Billy Barlows”; jugglers, some on stilts, and slack-rope walkers; […]

References

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary