who coined the phrase the blank from hell
Richard Lewis (comedian) Lewis claims to be the originator of the phrase "The ______ from hell" as in "the night from hell", "the date from hell" or "the roommate from hell". This theory is expounded in the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "The Nanny from Hell". Lewis has petitioned the editors of Bartlett's to be given credit for the coinage, but the editors claim that the phrase was a common idiom prior to Lewis's use of it.[9] For example, during World War I, kilted Scottish soldiers were given the nickname "The Ladies from Hell" (translation of German "Die Damen aus der Hölle") by German troops. However, the Yale Book of Quotations does attribute the phrase to Lewis.[10][11] There is a 1939 short story by John Russell Fearn called “The Man from Hell”, published in Fantastic Adventures.
To hell in a handbasket I. Windslow Ayer's 1865 polemic[2] alleges, "Judge Morris of the Circuit Court of Illinois at an August meeting of Order of the Sons of Liberty said: "Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would 'send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.'"[3]