Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) an evangelist.

1889

Dead Bird (Sydney) 21 Sept. 6/2: The assistants at a certain sporting barbers’ went to see the autocratic soul-bagger, and three got ‘saved’.

to become very drunk.

1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1898		Leicester Chron. 4 Mar. 12/5: He [...] was not averse to laying his sould in soak when he got a chance. In other words, he drank, and at times drank hard.

to see oneself realistically or otherwise as superior to the situation in which one currently exists.

1795		G. Colman Yngr Sylvester Daggerwood i 10: My father was an eminent Button-Maker... but I had a soul above buttons... I panted for a liberal profession.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 29: Few, if any, writers [...] who possess ‘souls above buttons’ can be so insensibly frigid as to be careless about the [...] golden advantages resulting from the smiles of that supreme goddess of the gods, FAME!
1834		Marryat Peter Simple (1911) 1: But my father, who was a clergyman of the Church of England, and the youngest brother of a noble family, had a lucrative living, and a ‘soul above buttons,’ if his son had not.
1847		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 13 Nov. 7/5: The wife who would properly discharge her duties, must never have a soul ‘above buttons’.
1851		L. Clappe in Shirley Letters (1949) 88: [She] flatteringly informed me, that I really had a ‘soul above buttons’.
1855		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 July 77/1: He has not ‘a soul above buttons,’ it would be very improper for a man in his position if he had.
1862		Herts Guardian 13 May 4/3: I gain so many shillings a week by a vulgar and detestable trade; but I have a soul above buttons.
1878		Falkirk Herald 31 Jan. 6/5: It is all very well to have a soul above buttons but they constitute an important part of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Feb. 12/1: ‘Oh, it wouldn’t do to say so,’ continued the visitor, taking a seat, and thereby revealing the fact that he had a soul above socks.
1886		Bucks. Herald 11 Dec. 8/1: Woman-hood ought now to have a soul above buttons.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 16 June 11/2: A society woman, with three little boys, an artist eye, and a soul above buttons, thinking to go one better and to give a touch of realism to the performance, dressed the three innocents in khaki, and ranged them in front of her while she murdered the ‘pome.’.
1906		M. Kelly in McClure’s Mag. May–Oct. [title] A Soul Above Buttons.