Definition of "elbowing"

To Johnson Life was as a Prison, to be endured with heroic faith: to Hume it was little more than a foolish Bartholomew-Fair Show-booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of which it was not worth while to quarrel […]

1832, Thomas Carlyle, “Boswell's Life of Johnson”, in Fraser's Magazine

But in the elbowings of the noisy throng There is no calm for holiness like thine.

1849, Thomas Burbidge, Mnemeion