Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (UK Und.) chains, fetters.

1802		Sporting Mag. 19 199/1: Epsom races for ever! Lose your chinkers; cock a pistol; stand the Bow-street racket.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant n.p.: Chinkers irons worn by prisoners.
1821		Flash Dict.
c.1850		Duncombe New and Improved Flash Dict.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 18: chinkers. Handcuffs and leg-irons united by a chain.

2. money, esp. as coins.

1827		H. Smith Reuben Apsley II 347: He must have had plenty of chinkers, or he never could have bribed any one to bring him the rop.
1834		H. Taylor Philip van Artevelde II 73: Come, Sir Hurly-Burly, where’s your metal / Write us the matter down in white and yellow / [...] So let us see your chinkers.
1841		Blackwood’s Edin. Mag. Feb. 154/1: You will find not one particle of difference between the manners, education, and modes of thought of Miss Emily Snobgrace, the banker's daughter in the one, and Miss Clara Chinkers, the banker’s daughter in the other.
1853		Dickens ‘Slang’ in Household Words 24 Sept. 75/2: Money – the bare, plain, simple word itself [...] might have sufficed, yet we substitute for it – [...] ready, mopusses shiners, dust, chips, chinkers [etc.].
1866		Letters by an Odd Boy 160: Beans, blunt, brass, bustle, coppers, chinkers, chips, dibbs, mopusses, needful, ochre, pewter, quids, rays, rowdy, shiners, stuff, tin, and stumpy!
1873		Sl. Dict. 116: Chink, or chinkers money. ? Ancient. Derivation obvious.
1902		H. Baumann ‘Sl. Ditty’ Londinismen (2nd edn) v: Rum coves that relieve us / Of chinkers and pieces, / Is gin’rally lagged, / Or, wuss luck, gits scragged.