Green’s Dictionary of Slang

wherewith n.

money.

[1659		J. Milton Touching Hirelings Out of Church (1717) 27: This was their Wages. [...] We our selves have not wherewithal; who shall bear the Charges of our Journey?] .
[1809		B.H. Malkin (trans.) Adventures of Gil Blas (1822) III 70: These had not the wherewithal to defray the expenses of an establishment].
1832		Boston Transcript 24 Jan. 2/1: Every thing went on swimmingly, till it occurred to the ‘wire pullers’ to hand round the hat, for the purpose of obtaining the wherewith to defray contingent expenses [DA].
1855		Spenser Prin. of Sociology 15: Heavily taxed in providing the wherewithal to meet excessive loss [F&H].
1864		Tennyson Enoch Arden n.p.: The wherewithal to give his babes a better bringing-up [F&H].
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 296: Among the less generally known terms [for money] are [...] wherewith, shadscales, or scales, ‘for short.’.
1887		Daily Trib. (Bismarck, ND) 23 Oct. 4/1: Money is ‘glue,’ ‘sugar,’ ‘rocks,’ [illegible], ‘brads’ and ‘wherewith.’.
1890		Dunde Eve. Teleg. 3 Apr. 2/5: We may talk of our money in a score of ways [...] ‘the actual,’ ‘the wherewithal,’ ‘beans,’ ‘blunt,’ [...] ‘shot,’ ‘feathers’.
1905		A. Binstead Mop Fair 206: He having begun [...] to make ‘great gobs of the wherewith.’.
1908		‘Old Sleuth’ Dock Rats of N.Y. (2006) 53: The men were all glad enough to step up and take a snifter with the stranger, who after so long a voyage they reckoned must have a pocketful of the wherewithal.
1910		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘He Felt His Position’ Sporting Times 7 May 1/3: He perhaps had not the wherewithal to pay.
1929		M. Prenner ‘Sl. Terms for Money’ in AS IV:5 357: To avoid using the word money, the well-informed user of slang may use [...] wherewithal.
1972		R.P. Hargreaves From Beads to Banknotes 150: Money in general was (and is) known as tin, dough, hoot, wherewithal.