Left-handed monkey wrench (1873)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

LEFT-HANDED MONKEY WRENCH--442 Google hits, 824 Google Groups hits

LEFT-HANDED SCREWDRIVER--226 Google hits, 666 Google Groups hits

LEFT-HANDED PENCIL--756 Google hits, 39 Google Groups hits

   The "left-handed" version seems to have appeared fairly soon after "monkey wrench" itself.  Maybe the word "monkey" adds to the flavor of the phrase.


(WWW.NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM)
Stevens Point Daily Journal - 6/10/1896
...hot sun, an' when I sprung the LEFT-HANDED MONKEY WRENCH on the uncle It.....ask Uncle Matt if he had a heft-handed MONKEY-WRENCH. How was I to know? I ain..
Stevens Point, Wisconsin   Wednesday, June 10, 1896  605 k

Trenton Evening Times - 8/16/1909
...read: wise; give the boy a LEFT-HANDED MONKEY-WRENCH. He held his faqa.....The druggist, wise to the Joke, handed the youngster a bis empty box..
Trenton, New Jersey   Monday, August 16, 1909  628 k

Indiana Weekly Messenger - 1/19/1910
...man replied: "I'm wise to this left handed MONKEY WRENCH business. I'm from.....a native whether he was right or left handed. "If you are left handed." he was..
Indiana, Pennsylvania   Wednesday, January 19, 1910  675 k


(AMERICAN PERIODICAL SERIES)
FROM THE FARM TO THE SHOP.
MARY DEAN. Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science (1871-1885). Philadelphia: Jan 1880. Vol. 25; p. 68 (9 pages)
Sixth page:  At first he does not know enough to stop when the "laying-off bell" rings, and the men are asking him if he "ain't sorry he's learnt the trade," and are sending him from one to another for "the half-round square" and "the left-handed monkey-wrench;"...


(MAKING OF AMERICA)
Author: Bailey, James M. (James Montgomery), 1841-1894.
Title: Life in Danbury: being a brief but comprehensive record of the doings of a remarkable people, under more remarkable circumstances, and chronicled in a most remarkable manner, by the author, James M. Bailey, "The Danbury new man"; and carefully compiled with a pair of eight-dollar shears, by the compiler.
Publication date: 1873.
Collection: Making of America Books
Search results: 1 match in full text
Page 261  - 1 term matching "left handed monkey wrench"
   ESTHER writes from Lowell, Massachusetts, that there is a gentleman there who wants to borrow a left-handed monkey-wrench.  Wouldn't a cross-eyed potato do him?