My husband complains that the disposition of teenagers in London is one of mocking hostility. I seem to suffer less from such encounters, and console him by saying it was ever thus.
In the 1790s ostlers’ boys would shout ‘Quoz!’ to disconcert an uncertain-looking passer-by. It was a word of doubtful meaning, perhaps connected with quiz.
A generation later, young loafers would call out ‘Oh, what a shocking bad hat!’ — enough to instil doubt in the most carefully dressed shopman or clerk. Neither men nor women were seen out in public without a hat.
The locus classicus for the phrase is in a book with a title perhaps more entertaining than its contents: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, and the Madness of Crowds (1841) by Charles Mackay (the natural father of Marie Corelli, the sensational novelist). Mackay gives a circumstantial origin for the phrase from a Southwark election, but I don’t find it convincing.
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