Bucket of Water is cockney rhyming slang for Daughter
💬 “I’ve just seen my Bucket on London Bridge“
Here’s a lovely story from Angela Webb – whose late partner Nick Webb gets the credit for Bucket of Water.
Nick was born and bred in Eltham and he had 4 children by his first wife. He came home one day and announced “he’d seen his Bucket at London Bridge”. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about as I’m originally from south Wales so didn’t grow up with this slang. He then slowly explained that Bucket of Water meant daughter. I did mention it to a London cabbie once and he knew straightaway what it meant.
Incidentally, he always called a counter or bar “the jump”; the dole office was known as the “bun house” (from bunce, I think) and anything black or dark was “as black as Newgate’s knocker” but I don’t know if these were just general slang terms used in the Eltham area or more widely used.
Submitted by Nick Webb.
First submitted on January 17, 2014.