1860 July 24, Robert Cellem, Visit of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to the British North American Provinces and United States in the Year 1860, Toronto: Henry Rowsell, published 1861, page 39:
Very few houses were lighted up, in consequence of a protest of the Insurance Companies. But the people contented themselves with parading the streets, and with seeing what was to be seen. As on the previous evening, the juvenile portion of the population indulged themselves ad libitum in the use of crackers, back-rappers, serpents, and squibs. How so many got into Newfoundland is a problem no one I have questioned is able to solve.
1911, “How I Baited The Bear”, in Little Folks, volume 74:
I struck a match and lighted the first backrapper. At the sound of the match the bear looked up. When he saw me he growled. I threw the lighted backrapper over the banisters, and struck another match. When the first backrapper struck the floor, the bear went over to it and sniffed at it curiously. It exploded, as I hoped it would do, right under his nose! You should have just seen him jump! The sound and the smell of it, as it went leaping about the hall, must have frightened him out of his wits.
But there was also a generous distribution of squibs, crackers, backarappers, sparklers, torches, dwarf-candles, elf-fountains, goblin-barkers and thunder-claps.
1956, John Petty, Five Fags A Day: The Last Year of a Scrap-Picker, Secker & Warburg, page 60:
He would sink like an express lift and leap like a deer: at times he was almost flat on his back and when the hammer cracked he often appeared to be standing on his nose: like a backarapper he fizzed up and down and from end to end of the tip.
1966, Oswald Harcourt Davis, The Master: A Study of Arnold Bennett, page 162:
It would have been so easy to remove these capricious intrusions of manner clashing with theme; so easy to afford quiet relief, as in the first half of the last chapter, instead of throwing in raillery like backarappers.
