1888. Texas Siftings, Nov. 3. Fashionable people who have spent the
summer at the watering places or at the seaside, but have now
returned to the cities, assert that the baggage-smasher has become
more destructive than ever. The baggage-smasher is indeed a terror.
In fact there are two of them: the one who flits from station to
station and dumps your poor dumb trunk with force enough to drive
piles in a government breakwater, and the one who loiters around
the depôt watching for his chance to shatter your baggage. The
depôt baggageman is the most culpable of the two species. In his
long and dark career of smashing trunks, he has, evidently, knocked
the hoops off his conscience, and there is no remorse brave,
foolhardy and reckless enough to tackle his heart-strings and play
on them.
2. Also a thief who hangs about ‘depôts,’ with a view to robbery of
luggage.
1861. New York Tribune, Nov. 23. Gamblers, ticket-swindlers,
emigrant robbers, baggage-smashers, and all the worst classes of
the city.
Bagged, ppl. adj. (American).—A term used to signify imprisonment and
victimization—probably only an extension of the idea of capture as
derived from sport, through the slang ‘to bag,’ i.e., to steal. Cf., To
bag.
Bagging, subs. (provincial slang).—In the first instance, food taken
between regular meals; now generally applied, especially in Lancashire,
to what is known in the South of England as ‘high tea.’
1750. J. Collier, in Lancashire Glossary (E.D.S.). Hoo’l naw cum
agen till baggin’ time. [M.]
1870. Chambers’ Journal, Oct., p. 661. Lancashire adopts the
whole-board or partial-board system very extensively. The local
term of bagging implies bread and cheese, or pies; and there are
all the varieties of board and lodging, dinner of potatoes and
bacon with buttermilk, bagging in the forenoon and afternoon,
dinner and lunch, and rations allowed for women.
1879. In Temple Bar Mag., 4 Jan. Baggin’ is not only lunch, but any
accidental meal coming between two regular ones.
Bagging the Over.—See Jockeying the over.
Bagman, subs. (popular).—1. A commercial traveller. Formerly of
respectable usage; now only employed contemptuously.
1765. Goldsmith, Essays, I. The bagman was telling a better story.
[M.]
1840. Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, p. 20. When all the rest of
mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty
hours’ coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and spruce as when he
started.
The term bagman took its rise in the saddle-bags in which the
commercial traveller of the past century carried his patterns and
goods. These saddle-bags being of larger dimensions than those usually
carried by travellers on horseback, would designate the commercial
traveller par excellence as the bagman.