kennel-raker

plural kennel-rakers · alternative kennel raker

1. archaicA poor unskilled menial laborer who has no steady employment.

   For scouring the water-courses through the cities; A fine periphrasis of a kennel-raker!

   1647, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, The Prophetess

   4 more examples

   The Link-boy, on the same scale of declension, scorned the kennel-raker; but we know not, though doubtless he could, who he thought more contemptible than himself.

   1827, W. H. Pyne, The World in Miniature; England, Scotland, and Ireland, page 257

   The vagabond kennel-raker, the nomadic coster, the houseless thief, the man of the lowest order of intellect or of morals, sees the majesty of the law descending to the punch-and-judy level.

   1852 March, “Public Executions in England”, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, volume 4, number 22, page 544

   He has been in all situations and occupations of life, according to his own account ; a potboy at Hampstead, a shoeblack, a chimney-sweeper, an East India Director, a kennel-raker, a gold-finder, an oyster-woman, a Jew cast-clothesman, a police justice, a judge, a keeper of Newgate, and, as he styles it, 'His Majesty's law iron-monger for the home department:' nay, he has even been Jack Ketch, and has hung hundreds; he has been a soldier, and has killed thousands; a Portuguese, and poniarded scores; a Jew pedlar, and cheated all the world; a member of Parliament for London, and betrayed his constituents; a Lord Mayor, a bishop, an admiral, a dancing-master, a Rabbi, Grimaldi in the pantomime, and ten thousand other occupations, that no tongue or memory but his own could enumerate.

   1841, Thomas Cogswell Upham, Elements of Mental Philosophy Enbracing the Two Departments of the Intellect and the Sensibilities, page 449

   Why you upstart ignoramus! do you take me for an ironmonger? I'll leave you to dabble in your little shabby brook like a kennel- raker as you are, but I'll help the Lord of the Manor to freight all the herring-boats in the bay with glorious bullion.

   1981, John O'Keeffe, Frederick M. Link, The plays of John O'Keeffe - Volume 4, page 177