Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) an artificial sore or wound, as placed on the body by a variety of mendicant villains; thus as v., to place an artificial sore/wound.

1612		Dekker O per se O M: [They have] bodies of soares (which they call their great Cleymes). [Ibid.] O3: This cuffin, getting glimmer / I’ th’ prat, so cleymed his jockey.
1665		Head Eng. Rogue I 36: A health went round to the Prince of Maunders [...] a fourth to the Earl of Clymes.
1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn) 50: Begging in the fields with Clymes or artificial Sores.
1688		R. Holme Academy of Armory Ch. iii item 68c: Canting Terms used by Beggars, Vagabonds, Cheaters, Cripples and Bedlams. [...] Cleymes, sores on the body.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Cleymes, sores without Pain raised on Beggers Bodies, by their own Artifice and cunning, (to move charity) by bruising Crows-foot, Speerwort, and Salt together, and clapping them on the Place, which frets the Skin, then with a Linnenrag, which sticks close to it; they tear off the Skin, and strew on it a little Powder’d Arsnick, which makes it look angrily or ill favoredly, as if it were a real Sore.
1725		New Canting Dict.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 19: cleymans Artificial sores made by beggars to impose on the credulous.
1871–82		B.M. Carew Life and Adventures.
1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890) 11: Cleymans. Artificial sores made by beggars.