Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the legs; esp. in phr. stir one’s stumps under stir v.

1600		Look About You xvi: Ha! crake! can your low stumps venture so deep Into affection’s stream?
1617		R. Brathwait Law of Drinking 70: Hee has quite lost the use of his stumps, how should he then possibly keepe his march? [F&H].
1663		S. Butler Hudibras Pt I canto 2 line 926: Getting up on stump and huckle, / He with the foe began to buckle.
1675		C. Cotton Scoffer Scoff’d (1765) 247: Those fat stumps thou walk’st upon.
1714		J. Gay Shepherd’s Week 6th Pastoral 59: The Squire who fought on bloody stumps.
1763		G. Colman Deuce Is In Him I i: I shall make shift to dance [...] on my stumps, Emily!
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 33: The priest walk’d home in doleful dumps, (Like Witherington upon his stumps).
1787		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Instructions to a Celebrated Laureat’ Works (1794) II 54: The men who with their legs have parted [...] star’d upon their oaken stumps.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) I 357: Howard his dearee ply’d her stumps.
1802		M. & R. Lovell Edgeworth Essays on Irish Bulls 110: Here is a man from Italy who goes on fighting, not like Witherington, upon his stumps, but fairly after he is dead.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1830		Mr Mathews’ Comic Annual 21: Old Mother Dunbird, I shall be at home at the Wolds before daybreak on Tuesday morning, so move your ancient stumps.
1841		‘Miseries Of An Omnibus’ Dublin Comic Songster 336: Some hobnailed clod walks over them whose stumps not very light are.
1848		Ladies’ Repository (N.Y.) Oct. VIII:37 317/1: Stump, a leg.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1880		D.W. Barrett Life and Work among Navvies 45: On one line he may have the name of ‘Stumps,’ and on a second that of ‘Tramping Tom’.
1891		H.B. Marriott-Watson Web of the Spider 183: I’ll go bail we wouldn’t ha’ got another half-mile on our stumps.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Oct. 32/3: The boss didn’t remember in the least. If the man was a softy, his luck wasn’t as much in as he had thought. But he was still confident. / ‘Hurry your stumps,’ he said.
1911		G. Stratton-Porter Harvester 513: Yes, I got to take you back, and hurry my stumps at that.
1916		N. Douglas London Street Games 37: Liar. Yer sez I wos a-layin dahn when all the time I wos on me stumps.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks.
1944		‘Jiver’s Bible’ in D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive.
1959		R. Shepherd ‘Villa Alexandria . . . 1870’ in Mss. from the Federal Writers’ Project 🌐 One of my boyhood friends here was Allan Greeley, son of old man Greeley, superintendent of the old Newman Street Presbyterian Sunday School, who had been sitting on his stumps waiting for something to happen in Jacksonville for many years.
1997		M. Walters Echo 273: It breaks my heart to watch her struggling to be civil to me in case I up my stumps and leave.

2. (UK Und.) shoes.

1753		J. Poulter Discoveries (1774) 43: Stumps and Stop Drawers; Shoes and Stockings.
1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972).

3. (US black) the feet.

1957

D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 8 June 14: His stumps were covered with some low cut pumps.