shoeblacking

Updated: May 5, 2025

William Frost, a cripple, was the son of a pin-maker in Christ Church parish, Southwark, and as to his education, my account says it was in hereditary ignorance. He had wrought, it seems, while a boy at his father's trade of pin-making, but since he was thirteen or fourteen had addicted himself to that preparative trade to the gallows, shoeblacking.

Arthur L. Hayward - Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences

We breakfasted at Simoneau's, in the inner room, with its frescos done in beer and shoeblacking by a brace of hungry Bohemians, who used to frequent the place and thus settle their bill. Five of us sat at that uninviting board and awaited our turn, while Simoneau hovered over a stove that was by no means equal to the occasion.

Charles Warren Stoddard - In the Footprints of the Padres

Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realized by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy?

Thomas Carlyle - Sartor Resartus: the life and opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh