1812. J. and H. Smith, Rejected Addresses, p. 128 [ed. 1869]. Each one shilling god within reach of a nod is, And plain are the charms of each gallery goddess.
1843. Thackeray, Irish Sketch Book, ch. xxvii. The gallery was quite full … one young god, between the acts, favoured the public with a song.
1872. M. E. Braddon, Dead Sea Fruit, ch. xiv. There come occasionally actors and actresses of higher repute, eager to gather new laurels in these untrodden regions, and not ill pleased to find themselves received with noisy rapture and outspoken admiration by the ruder gods and homelier goddesses of a threepenny gallery.
1890. Globe, 7 Apr., p. 2, c. 2. The gods, or a portion of them, hooted and hissed while the National Anthem was being performed.
1892. Sydney Watson, Wops the Waif, iii., iv. It is only when we have paid our ‘tuppence’ and ascended to the gallery just under the roof, known as ‘among the gods,’ that we begin to understand what is meant by the lowest classes, the ‘great unwashed.’
1892. Pall Mall Gaz., 20 Apr., p. 2, c. 3. If theatre managers would only give the public the chance of as good a seat as can be got at the Trocadero or the Pavilion, at the same price, and manage the ventilation of their houses so as not to bake the gods and freeze the ‘pitites,’ I venture to think that fewer people would go to the music halls.
2. in. pl. (printers’).—The quadrats used in jeffing (q.v.).
3. (tailors’).—A block pattern. Gods of cloth = ‘classical tailors.’—Grose. See Snip.
4. (Eton).—A boy in the sixth form.
1881. Pascoe, Life in our Public Schools. A god at Eton is probably in a more exalted position, and receives more reverence than will ever afterwards fall to his lot.