Boodle

For the Simon Templar short story collection of this title by Leslie Charteris, see Boodle (The Saint). For the London gentlemen's club, see Boodle's

Boodle, or boodler, was a bar-room or street term for money or booty applied by the yellow press (in 1884-1886) to members of the New York Board of Aldermen who were charged with accepting bribes in connection with the granting of a franchise for a street railroad on Broadway. Thereafter, the term came into common use to signify bribery in general and particularly in municipal governments.

Source: Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940