1589. Nashe, Martins Months Minde (Grosart), i. 185. Remember the shreddes that fall into the Tailors hell, neuer come backe to couer your backe.
1592. Defence of Conny Catching, in Greene’s Wks., xi., 96. This hel is a place that the tailors haue vnder their shopboord, wher al their stolne shreds is thrust.
1606. Day, Ile of Gulls. That fellowes pocket is like a tailors hell, it eats up part of every mans due; ’tis an executioner, and makes away more innocent petitions in one yeere, than a red-headed hangman cuts ropes in an age.
1625. Jonson, Staple of News, i., 1. That jest Has gain’d thy pardon, thou hadst lived Condemn’d To thine own hell.
1663. T. Killegrew, Parson’s Wedding, iii., 5., in Dodsley, O.P. (1780) xi., 452. Careless [addressing a tailor]. Why then, thou art damned. Go, go home, and throw thyself into thine own hell; it is the next way to the other.
1663–1712. King, Art of Cookery. In Covent Garden did a taylor dwell, Who might deserve a place in his own hell.
1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v. Hell, the Place where the Taylers lay up their Cabbage, or Remnants, which are sometimes very large.
1698. Money Masters All Things, p. 56. The Cheating Knave some of the clues does throw Into his hell-hole; and then lets her know That he her web cannot work out o’ th’ Loom.
1704. Swift, Tale of a Tub, Sec. iii. The tailor’s hell is the type of a critic’s common-place book.
1725. New Cant. Dict., s.v.