Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also cheap jack, cheap johnny, jack) a shop, or person, selling cheap goods; thus as v., to sell such goods.

1843		Hants. Advertiser 18 Nov. 4/6: A case of stealing two rabbits, tried at last Sessions, where the witness, a travellling ‘Cheap Jack’, was brought 150 miles.
1851		Cambridge Indep. Press 4 Oct. 3/4: ‘Now, I’ll tell you what it is!’ [...] is the slang of a ‘Cheap-Jack’ at a fair, and out of place on the boards of a respectable theatre.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 324/1: Some of the street-sellers of manufactured articles are also patterers. Among these are the ‘cheap jacks,’ or ‘cheap Johns’. [Ibid.] I 326/1: Their system of selling is to attract a crowd of persons by an harangue after the following fashion: ‘Here I am, the original cheap John from Sheffield [...] Nobody can sell as cheap as me, seeing as I gets all my goods upon credit’.
1866		Night Side of N.Y. 26: The front of the bar, like the booth of a cheap johnny, stares at you with all its trinkets.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. [as cit. 1859].
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 1: A series of short sketches of the life, manners, and customs of Cheap Johns, vulgo Jacks. [Ibid.] 131: He was about forty-five years old when he died, which was about a year after I commenced ‘Cheap Johnning’.
1885		Louisiana Democrat (Baton Rouge, LA) 3 Oct. 1/2: And Cheap John as before, / Is selling bargains rare.
1889		G.R. Sims Horrible London 126: Watercress and flower girls, cheapjacks, street stall-keepers of all sorts and conditions.
1895		Morn. Call (SF) 24 Jan. 3/2: The Nicaraguan scheme [...] was an attempt to canonize a new St Peter - the ‘Peter Funk of legislation.’ It was the glorification of the Cheap Johns of Congressional work.
1901		Williams News (Phoenix, AZ) 21 Dec. 6/3: [advert] Cheap John Racket Store with a large and assorted stock of Xmas presents and bargains for all.
1911		G.R. Sims Off the Track in London 131: The street begins to be closely lined with barrows and stalls, the stands of Cheap Jacks.
1912		R.W. Brown ‘Word-List From Western Indiana’ in DN III:viii 573: Cheap John, n. [...] one who sells goods of any kind on the street corners.

2. (US) a seedy brothel or bar.

1904		O. Kildare Good of the Wicked 21: I guess, most of you people ain’t had what you may call a regular Christmas dinner in some time. [...] The whole thing is fixed up just the same as up in Delmonico’s or any o’ them places, and I hope you won’t tackle it the same as if it was a beefstew in Cheap John’s.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.