table bell

table bell (plural table bells)

1. (now historical) A hand-held bell intended to be rung in a dining room to call for service, but also used to call patients in medical clinics, assistants in offices, etc.
   • 1825, James Boaden, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble‎^[1], page 415:

     It is more awful and alarming, thus to startle silence by a deep-toned summoner, than to be brought back into petty life, by the tinkle of a table-bell.

   • 1837, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the American Note-Books‎^[2], volume 1, published ca. 1868, page 61:

     […] we were waited upon by a tall, very tall woman, young and maiden-looking, yet with a strongly outlined and determined face. Afterwards we found her to be the wife of mine host. She poured out our tea, came in when we rang the table-bell to refill our cups, and again retired.

   • 1924, Ford Madox Ford, chapter 6, in Some Do Not ...‎^[3], page 159:

     […] they ran about corridors or frantically rang table bells, asking with high voices of querulous eunuchs why form ninety thousand and two wasn’t ready.

   • 1935, Hsi Tseng Tsiang, chapter 9, in The Hanging on Union Square:

     Suddenly Miss Digger looked drunk, rang the table bell drunkenly and without asking Mr. Nut, ordered one glass after another.