Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. any working-class woman wearing a shawl.

1897		Dundee Eve. Teleg. 7 May 4/2: The culprits form a motley group. There is the ‘shawlie’ [...] a squalling youngster in her arms.
1924		Aberdeen Press & Jrnl 3 Mar. 3/4: Once a ‘shawlie’ always a ‘shawlie,’ always a wearer of the badge of the tenement.
1940		Perthshire Advertiser 13 Mar. 10/1: ‘Shawlie’ women [...] are perfectly entitled to wear fur coats if they can pay for them.
1944		F. MacManus Pedlar’s Park 50: I lean back and turn to see the reflected face of the shawly whom I take to be one of those hard-working women who sell fruit and vegetables in the street .
1952		M.F. Caulfield Black City 21: ‘Shame on ye, ye ould bastard’ shouted one of the old shawlies.
1961		F. O’Connor An Only Child (1970) 33: I hated the very sight of that shawl [...] it meant an immediate descent in the social scale from the ‘hatties’ to the ‘shawlies’ – the poorest of the poor.
1989		H. Leonard Out After Dark 63: She stood between the fruit-stalls of the shawlies who were screeching ‘T’ree ha’pence deh luvly apples’.
1993		(con. 1930s) M. Verdon Shawlies, Echo Boys, the Marsh and the Lanes 19: I remember one old shawlie, she had a tongue like a razor yet you’d often see her at some old melodrama in the Opera House crying her eyes out.
1999		(con. 1916) R. Doyle A Star Called Henry (2000) 101: A bunch of shawlies they were, all shapes and ages under their black hoods.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1940s–50s		‘Flann O’Brien’ ‘In Hospital’ in Hair of the Dogma (1989) 61: I heard Mrs Paw-nay confide to a shawly visitor.
1993		(con. 1930s) M. Verdon Shawlies, Echo Boys, the Marsh and the Lanes 69: There was always the worry that we might marry beneath ourselves, to a shawlie girl or someone living in the lanes.