wheel-barrow man

plural wheel-barrow men

1. UShistoricalA convict sentenced to hard labor in the 1800s, especially one sentenced to work maintaining the roads.

   "wheel-barrow men" — felons from the county jail who were condemned earlier by a strange law to sweep the streets "publickly and disgracefully weighted down with irons."

   1967, Negley King Teeters, Jack H. Hedblom, "... Hang by the neck ...": the legal use of scaffold and noose, gibbet, stake, and firing squad from colonial times to the present, page 119

   5 more examples

   At the outset of the reformatory process in Pennsylvania, it was thought that a salutary effect would result from long continued, visible, or public punishment, by degrading labour in the streets or upon the highways ; ... and many persons, now living, can distinctly remember when convicts (sometimes called “Wheel-barrow Men”) were to be seen at work in the streets of Philadelphia with a chain and clog upon the neck or leg, and other badges of degradation and guilt.

   1845, Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy, page 3

   Are crimes more frequent in that country than in the other States ? Are there more executions ? I believe there have been as few as in any part of the Continent, and those which have token place have been generally of emigrant convicts, or fugitive •wheel-barrow men ; he would be bold to assert that in no State on the Continent is there more order, sobriety, and obedience to good government; more industry and frugality; nor is there any trace of the influence of slavery on the character of her citizens.

   1860, Thomas Hart Benton, Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856

   Under the former system, the convicts of Philadelphia were obliged to perform labor in the public streets under degrading circumstances. These prisoners were called " the wheel-barrow men," and were often exposed to insult and ill-treatment by the mob.

   1876, The First Century of the Republic: A Review of American Progress

   And moreover, the aforesaid Centinel, as a false traitor, &c. in order to fulfil those his most horrid and diabolical treasons, and traiterous compassings, imaginations and purposes aforesaid, and to leave nothing undone, which envy, hatred, malice, ambition and a diabolical heart could suggest, did collogue with certain wheel-barrow men, convicts and criminals, now in the new gaol of the city and county of Philadelphia, ...

   1986, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume XVI, →ISBN

   This act, passed on September 15, 1?86, hoped "to produce such strong impression upon the minds of others as to deter them from committing like offenses" by sentencing convicts to "hard labor, publicly and disgracefully imposed." Chained and clogged, these "wheel-barrow men" worked by day cleaning and repairing public roadways and buildings.

   1987, Glen A. Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition With Free Workers in Industrializing America, 1840-1890, page 6

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wheel-barrow, man.; a man working with a wheel-barrow.