kennel-raker

English

Alternative forms

• kennel raker

Noun

kennel-raker (plural kennel-rakers)

1. (archaic) A poor unskilled menial laborer who has no steady employment.
   • 1647, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, The Prophetess:

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

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

     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.

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

     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.

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

     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.

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

     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.