Going to hell in a handbasket

Posted by Bruce Kahl on December 07, 1999

In Reply to: Going to hell in a handbasket posted by Jennifer Borchardt on December 06, 1999

: Could someone please tell me where the phrase "going to hell in a handbasket" came from?

www.randomhouse.com/ :

Clues to the origin of "going to hell in a handbasket," meaning "deteriorating rapidly or utterly," are, unfortunately, scarce as hens' teeth. The eminent slang historian Eric Partridge, in his Dictionary of Catch Phrases: American and British, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day dates the term to the early 1920's. Christine Ammer, in her "Have A Nice Day -- No Problem," a dictionary of cliches, agrees that the phrase probably dates to the early 20th century, and notes that the alliteration of "hell" and "handbasket" probably contributed to the popularity of the saying. Ms. Ammer goes a bit further and ventures that, since handbaskets are "light and easily conveyed," the term "means going to hell easily and rapidly." That seems a bit of a stretch to me, but I do think the addition of "in a handbasket" (or "in a bucket," as one variant puts it) does sound more dire and hopeless than simply "going to hell."
The expression to hell meaning 'to ruin or destruction; to an unfortunate state of affairs' is found since the early nineteenth century. The early examples are quite natural sounding today: "There's a thousand dollars gone to hell," wrote someone in 1827. ("Go to hell!" used as an exclamation is older, and is not often found in fancier forms.)
Simple but pungent expressions like this often develop elaborated variants; for example, the imprecation "kiss my ass!" can be expanded (from one direction) into "kiss my royal Irish ass!" or (from another) into "kiss my a** in Macy's window!" Similarly, the expression "go to hell" developed a number of variants describing the conveyance for reaching Pluto's realm, and these conveyances don't necessarily make sense. Carl Sandburg, writing about the 1890s, comments that "The first time I heard about a man 'going to hell in a hanging basket' I did a lot of wondering what a hanging basket is like." Whatever a "hanging basket" is, it gives us the alliteration, like such other common examples as "going to hell in a hack [i.e. a taxicab]," "handcart," and our "handbasket." Non-alliterating versions include "in a wheelbarrow," "on a poker," "in a bucket" ("But at least I'm enjoying the ride," as the Grateful Dead say), and "in a basket."