Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also bit of fancy goods) a young woman.

1765		Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies 11: This [i.e. a young prostitute] is a fresh bit of goods, excessively genteel.
1881		Leeds Times 22 Jan. 7/6: I said she was a crummy piece of goods.
1885		‘’Arry on the Merry Month of May’ in Punch 16 May 229/1: A bit of goods in pink musling.
1894		E.W. Rogers [perf. Marie Lloyd] The Barmaid 🎵 The customers of the fair sex cry / ‘Forward bit of goods, don’t you think so. / See her golden hair, my dear, I’ll bet its dye’.
1898		Dly Teleg. 30 Dec. 8/5: ‘There was little Soph, a reg’lar bit of fancy goods’.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Dec. 22/2: I’ve kept my waist, miss, and the Colonel always did say I was the trimmest bit o’ goods in the regiment.
1914		Bulletin (Sydney) 30 July 22: ‘She looks a very expensive bit of goods.’.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 63: There was little Soph, a reg’lar bit o’ fancy goods.
1925		L. Doyle Dear Ducks 72: She was a comfortable sonsy-lookin’ wee bit of goods.
1936		D. Footman Pig and Pepper (1990) 251: That’s not enough to keep an expensive bit of goods like you on.
1941		Betty Miller Farewell Leicester Square (2000) 226: ‘That’s a nice bit of goods you have at the telephone downstairs,’ she said, irreverently. ‘Bed-worthy, or not?’.
1950		A. Christie Murder Is Announced (1958) 74: She strikes me as a nasty bit of goods.

2. something exceptional.

1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 5 June 2nd sect. 11/3: From that point right on to the judge’s box the chestnut — a game little bit of goods, by the way was — not given a second's peace.
1911		E. Dyson ‘Dukie M’Kenzie’s Dawnce’ in Benno and Some of the Push 35: I sez, ‘’Ow are yeh!’ I sez. ‘It’s a bit iv good goods ’ere t’-night, ain’t it?’.