claqueurs

I was glad to see that the more extravagant distortions were not specially popular with the audience -- that nearly all the applause bestowed on those ballet-feats which seem devised only to favor a liberal display of the person came from the little knot of hired "claqueurs" in the center of the pit.

Glances at Europe In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. Horace Greeley 1841

And spare me the smarmy, unctuous statements from the John Boehners and Mitch McConnells and their claqueurs and their overseers.

Paula Gordon: Only a Pawn in Their Game Paula Gordon 2011

Lucien on his way down saw a march past of claqueurs and retailers of tickets.

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris 2007

The galleries even silenced the claqueurs when they led off with exaggerated salvos.

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris 2007

Braulard makes, perhaps, thirty thousand francs every year in this way, and he has his claqueurs besides, another industry.

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris 2007

The public in front sees unexpected or well-deserved success, and applauds; the public does not see the preparations, ugly as they always are, the painted supers, the claqueurs hired to applaud, the stage carpenters, and all that lies behind the scenes.

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris 2007

He was not even a Catholic, yet that was the only ghost of a code that he had, the gaudy, ritualistic, paradoxical Catholicism whose prophet was Chesterton, whose claqueurs were such reformed rakes of literature as Huysmans and

This Side of Paradise 2003

The press inveighs against it; audiences, far from being duped, often remain silent when most pleased, lest they should be confounded with the _claqueurs_.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847 Various

The leader of the _claque_ knows his cues as if he were an actor in the piece, and at the psychologic moment the _claqueurs_ burst forth with their clatter and start the house applauding.

The Theory of the Theatre Clayton Hamilton

When well worked up, add a murder or large dose of innocence (according to the palate of the guests) -- Season, with a strong infusion of claqueurs and box orders.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, August 7, 1841 Various