"step out" = die, 1846

[George Thompson]

Testimony in the trial of Catherine Costello, an abortionist.


On the 13th February, about 9 A. M., he [her husband] came to me in 17th
street and said that he had got a body -- one of his old 'ooman's customers
that had stepped out -- which he wanted me to take away.


This sense of "step out" is not in the OED.


Later, the same witness quoted the expression "go off", with the same sense;
this is in the OED, with 4 citations, viz., Shakespeare, the Tatler, 1779  &
1888.


Maxwell told me that the female had been operated on by Madame Costello;
that they thought she was doing well, but she went off in a hurry.  Mrs.
Costello said she had been screwed up and she never was so astonished as
when she went off in a hurry.


"screw up" =  to upset, disturb mentally (IV 12 c), earliest 1942; but it's
not clear who the referent is in "she had been screwed up": Mrs. Costello
(my supposition) or the dead patient.  If the dead patient, then perhaps
"screwed up" refers to some procedure to induce an abortion?


     New York Morning Express, April 24, 1846, p. 2, cols. 5-6

Let me say, by the way, that I really dislike the new format the OED has
adopted.


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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