Swell Street

English

Proper noun

Swell Street

1. (UK, slang, obsolete) The West End of London.
   • 1846, George William MacArthur Reynolds, The Mysteries of London, volume 2, page 140:

     But the life that I love is in Swell-street to shine, / With a Mounseer-fak'd calp, and my strummel all fine, […]

   • 1888, Henry King, Savage London, page 349:

     "My beauty, it's no fault of yourn ^[sic] that you're fit to mate with a lord; but it ain't in me to eat of his bread, and live respectable to order, in Swell Street."

   • Henry Pitman, The Popular Lecturer [afterw.] Pitman's Popular Lecturer (page 140)

     […] the never-failing curling lotion, invented and manufactured by Fop and Co., of Swell-street, London.

References

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary