E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Tub-woman (A).
A drawer of beer at a country public-house.
1
“The common people had always a tradition that the queen’s [Anne] grandmother … had been a washerwoman, or, as Cardinal York asserted, a tub-woman—that is, a drawer of beer at a country publichouse.”—Howell: History of England; Anne, p. 171.
