Paul’s Walkers

Loungers who frequented the middle of St. Paul’s, which was the Bond Street of London up to the time of the Commonwealth. (See Ben Jonson’s Every Man out of his Humour, where are a variety of scenes given in the interior of St. Paul’s. Harrison Ainsworth describes these “walkers” in his novel entitled Old St. Paul’s.)

“The young gallants … used to meet at the central point, St. Paul’s: and from this circumstance obtained the appellation of Paul’s Walkers, as we now say Bond Street Loungers.”—Moser: European Magazine, July, 1807.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.