[Ads-l] "this child" antedated, though not by much

[George Thompson]

            When committed by the magistrate, Mary [Williams, black,]
flatly refused to stir, and said, "I want a rumpus, and now I'll have one!"
and she instantly threw herself on the floor, and screamed, "There now,
carry me if you want me, but as to walking, this child don't do that!"
            Herald (New York, N.Y.), January 16, 1837, p. 2, col. 5

OED:
 P5. colloquial.  this child: (esp. in African-American usage) oneself; I,
me.Now only in historical contexts.
1839    New World 26 Oct. 4/7   ‘You knows you can' shine whar dis child is
no how’.
a1848    G. F. Ruxton Life in Far West (1849) p. xiii   This child has felt
like going West for many a month.
1852    H. B. Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin I. vi. 73   ‘Be careful of the
horses, Sam..don't ride them too fast’... ‘Let dis child alone for dat!’
said Sam.
1927    W. E. Collinson Contemp. Eng. 74   From the sixties..not for this
child.

GAT

-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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