barrow man

Noun

wheel-barrow man (plural wheel-barrow men)

1. (US, historical) A convict sentenced to hard labor in the 1800s, especially one sentenced to work maintaining the roads.
   • At the outset of the reformatory process in Pennsylvania, it was thought that a salutary effect would result from long continued, visible, or public punishment, by degrading labour in the streets or upon the highways ; ... and many persons, now living, can distinctly remember when convicts...1845, Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy, page 3
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wheel-barrow, man.; a man working with a wheel-barrow.