going to hell in a handcart

[nickm]

From where does the expression "going to hell in a handcart" come from?

[Clanad]

Difficult to decipher... bear with me here: Firstly, the phrase has alternate variants; i.e., here in the U.S. it's often heard as 'going to hell in a handbasket" which is strange in it it's concept, since a hand 'basket' is thought of as being quite small. Regardless, one source reads thus:
"...a semantic equivalent to our mysterious phrase appears in a source quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. It is from a sermon of 1626 by Thomas Adams, wherein Robet Adams published a 'massive folio' of his sermons in 1629, and an augmented collection came out in 1862 which includes '.... But it will be, as the byword is, in a wheelbarrow: the fiends, and not the angels, will take hold on him.' IOne can see that 'Go to heaven in a wheelbarrow' means the same as 'Go to hell in a handcart', but I do not see why wheelbarrows are susceptible to fiends . On interpretr suggests that handcart or wheelbarrow is the equivalent of hell-cart, which is a name given in the early 17th century to a carriage used by prostitutes..."
Additionally, the same source includes "...In Fairford church, Gloucestershire, the great West window (installed before 1517 AD) shows the Day of Judgment in stained glass, with the innocent going to heaven and the guilty going to hell. Among the latter is an old woman in a wheelbarrow, being pushed to her doom by a blue devil. So the idea of "going to hell in a handcart" is a good 500 years old."

Contd.

[Clanad]

Contd.

Finally, the discussion concludes with this observation "... Consider, if you will, that decapitation was common from at least the early Middle Ages, and that the Hallifax Gibbet (predicessor of the Guillotine) dates to perhaps 1066. Heads were allowed to "drop" into baskets for easier disposal. The term "Head in a Handbasket" (alliterative, no doubt)was used as description of a very bad outcome. Noted in later literature, the 1714 phrase in research of Hell in a Handbasket often quotes "the Governor" of the given discussion talking about "Head in a Handbasket." This, and the given "Hell in a Handcart" noted in the Fairford Church (England), plus a bit of creative license, and Head-in-a-handbasket is not far from Hell-in-a-handbasket. My suspicion is that the phrase grew from an era where decapitation was common."

Take your pick [([Middle English piken, to pr!ck, from Old English *pcian, to pr!ck, and from Old French piquer, to pierce (from Vulgar Latin *piccre; see pique).]