Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Can./UK/US Und.) bread.

1882		‘The Jargon of Thieves’ in Derry Jrnl 8 Sept. 6/5: A loaf of bread is a ‘dummy’ .
1897		J. London ‘The Road’ in Hendricks & Shepherd Jack London Reports (1970) 311–21: punk or dummy, bread.
1902		Wash. Times (DC) 14 Sept. 10/3: Dummy — Bread.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.
1911		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 34: Judge!! I didn’t hardly git in the house before me wife wing me on the peeper wid a loaf of dummy an —.
1914		Wash. Post 11 Nov. Miscellany 3/6: Bread is generally called ‘dummy,’ an old army term.
1927		C. Samolar ‘Argot of the Vagabond’ in AS II:9 389: Bread is also called dummy.
1936		Mencken Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 580: In virtually all American prisons stew is slum, bread is punk or dummy, gravy is skilley.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 63/2: Dummy. [...] 2. (P) Bread.
1955		Great Bend Trib. (KS) 2 July 3/1: You’d never guess the names of many dishes [...] raisin bread (hunky dummy).
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! 142: Three slices of home-made dummy and a scoop of CNR strawberries.
1992		Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 67: Dummy, [...] Bread.

2. an empty bottle.

[1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 135: dummies, empty bottles and drawers in an apothecary’s shop].
1933		‘William Juniper’ True Drunkard’s Delight 236: An M.T. is an empty bottle, one bearing Moll Thompson’s mark, i.e. M.T., a corpse, dummy [...] dead ’un.
a.2003		‘Hare Pie Scrambling and Bottle-Kicking – Hallaton, Leicestershire’ on Phil Ellery’s Cornish Website 🌐 The dummy or empty ‘bottle’ is then also fought for, after which the other full one is carried in procession to the Market Cross on Hallaton Green where it is broken open and the contents shared out.