Green’s Dictionary of Slang

an impoverished person.

1840		Bell’s Life in London 12 Apr. 4/5: A Liverpool ‘hard-up’ declared [it] was perfect ‘cruelty to animals’.
1857		‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Hard-up, a poor person.
1874		J.H. Carter Log of Commodore Rollingpin 94: Three parts of laziness and one of pride will make a genuine hard-up.
1902		Clarence & Richmond Express 1 July 3/3: It was usual to find several ‘swaggies’ in camp cooking ‘Johnnycakes’ made from the pannikin of flour [...] generally doled out by squatters to ‘hard-ups’.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 11 June 1/1: The mob of mummers wildly struggling for the public crust is a painful thing [and] the hungry hard-tips mostly exist hy raking each other's chin.
1911		H. Lawson ‘Ah Soon’ in Roderick (1972) 770: She was always kind to Chinamen, blacks, and hard-ups.
1964		J.A. Lee Shiner Slattery 28: Used to employ hard-ups and see if he could get them to work.