darby

[George Thompson]

"darby" = handcuffs is in HDAS, and is well covered in Green's Dictionary of
Slang.  The following, though, seems to be the earliest appearance in
America.  Moreover, all of Green's 18th C citations show the word as cant --
most of them are expressly from a "cant song" or the like.  So this is the
earliest appearance, it seems, in standard English.

[an ad for two runaways, from Baltimore: "Richard Dawson, an English
convict", and "Solomon, a Negro"]  Had on when he went away, an iron collar,
a darby on each leg with a chain to one of them, all double rivetted, a new
felt hat, old brown cloth coat. . . .
Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet, or, the General Advertiser, May 22, 1775, p. 1
(from Readex's Early American Newspapers)

GAT

--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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