Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a beating or thrashing.

c.1790		‘De Kilmainham Minit’ in Luke Caffrey’s Gost 8: His Pushing-block pissy [?] came in, / From tipping de Trottler a Dusting; / Her Stuff-shop was up to the Chin, / Like a cram’d Fowl wid Tenderness busting.
1847		J.E. Walsh Ireland Sixty Years Ago (1885) 81: When the criminal was turned off, the ‘dusting of the scrag-boy’ began, the hangman was assailed, not merely with shouts and curses, but often with showers of stones.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter II 166: ‘Go it, Bluster, give him a dusting, and make the pace hot’.
1889		H. Smart Long Odds II 24: ‘We have given those fellows [i.e. Arab troops] a terrible dusting, but they take their punishment like men, and will have another shy at us’.
1900		Marvel 29 May 2: I took the can out of his hand, and gave the fellow himself as good a dusting [...] as he ever got in his life.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 3 Jan. 8/1: [of a tornado] Stories [...] show what a terrific dusting-up the township of Iron Knob got on Monday. When the terrible tornado passed [etc.].
1919		Marvel 3 Mar. 5: How did you like your dusting, Donbrook?
1920		Marvel 21 Aug. 13: Ay, we gave those Yankees a proper dusting up.
1930		M. Fiaschetti You Gotta Be Rough 66: [C]rooks open up to their broads as no third degree or dusting off in the back room of a station house can make them.
1996		J. Cameron It Was An Accident 242: We gave them an assist on Wednesday up Mickey’s, gave him a little dusting.
2007		N. McCall Them (2008) 64: When the dusting was done, Ricky leaned over and coughed up blood.