ironmongress

English

Noun

ironmongress (plural ironmongresses)

1. Alternative form of ironmongeress
   • 1752 July 30, Gregory Whitewash, edited by W. S. Lewis and Ralph S. Brown, Jr, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with George Montagu (The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Corerspondence; volume nine), volume I, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, published 1941, pages 139–140:

     The younger Lady Suffolk only spread a small quantity made into ointment on a bank bill of 70,000 pound, and it has made her first love Lord Falkland marry her: Sir Th. Robinson who intended to outlive his Barbadoes ironmongress,¹³ is dying for love of the same Countess. […] 13. Sarah Booth, m. (1) Samuel Salmon; m. (2) (between 1742–7, when he was Gov. of Barbadoes) Sir Thomas Robinson, Bt, of Rokeby. ‘An ironmonger’s widow, who gave him 10,000l. to be a lady, but would not follow him to England’ (HW’s notes to Maty’s Memoirs . . . of . . . Chesterfield, at end of Philobiblon Society, Miscellanies 1867–8, xi. 71; gec, Baronetage; Emily J. Climenson, Elizabeth Montagu, 1906, ii. 276).

   • 1836 January 2, “A Treatise on Painting. By Leonardo Da Vinci. Translated by J. F. Rigaud. With a Life of the Author. By J. W. Brown, Esq. Nicholls & Son.”, in The Athenæum: Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, number 427, London, page 10:

     Then the portrait of Francis’s mistress is called La belle Furoniere, instead of Ferronière (the beautiful Ironmongress).

   • 1859, “Marion”, in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXVI, Edinburgh: Sutherland & Knox; London: Partridge & Co., chapter IV, page 139:

     Our home was over an ironmonger’s shop, the ironmongress condescending to let us three rooms. She was a very grand lady was this ironmongress, very grand indeed; her flounces and her furbelows were wonderful to behold!

   • [1878], Alexandre Dumas, “His Excellency the Duc d’Orleans”, in The Regent’s Daughter. An Historical Romance., London: George Routledge and Sons, →OCLC, page 86:

     I understand; ah, if it were only in pursuit of some little ironmongress in the Pont Neuf, or the pretty widow of the Rue Saint Augustine, it might be worth your while.

   • 1916, Hardware Dealers’ Magazine, page 754:

     The English Ironmongress / The war has done more to push English women to the front in the world’s great activities, than Mrs. Pankhurst and her associates in the suffrage campaign of “frightfulness” were able to do in all their years of hair-pulling and arson.

   • 1970, René de Obaldia, Plays, volume 2, London: Calder and Boyars, →ISBN, page 112:

     I often have the same dream: you are an ironmonger, I am your wife, an ironmongress …

   • 1985 March 8, Toby Fitton, “Local pride”, in The Times Literary Supplement, number 4,275, page 266:

     The narrator is sensitive to country smells as well as to scenery, and to drunkenness, batterings, and the domestic tensions of local peasant households – encountered through friendships with the local poacher, Batt Ryan, and with the [?] village ironmongress.