English edit

Etymology edit

back +‎ slum

Noun edit

backslum (plural backslums)

  1. A slum; the poor and disreputable portion of a town.
    • 1875, Henry Sampson, A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times, page 392:
      It is now about the foulest specimen extant of that kind of backslum or alley where, a generation back, according to Hood, pigs and Irish were wont to rally.

References edit

  • John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary