Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus./N.Z./S.Afr.) an immigrant.

1845		E.J. Wakefield Adventure N.Z. I 337: The profound contempt which the whaler expresses for the ‘lubber of a jimmy-grant’, as he calls the emigrant.
1849		Bell’s Life in Sydney 7 July 3/1: John Scott Underwood, a ‘jimmigrant,’ who has been in Hie Colony about rive weeks.
1857		Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 3 Jan. 3/2: Price isn’t a bad sort [...] but he doesn’t like a jemmigrant!
1858		Bell’s Life in Sydney 3 July 3/2: I’m no new chum gimmigrant.
1859		J.D. Mereweather Diary of a Working Clergyman 4: Speaking contemptuously of some newly-arrived immigrants (‘Jimmy Grants’, I think, was the slang term she applied to them).
1867		Cassell’s Mag. 440: ‘I never wanted to leave England,’ I have heard an old Vandemonian observe boastfully. ‘I wasn’t like one of these “Jemmy Grants”’ (cant term for ‘emigrants’).
1877		Illus. Sydney News 26 May 3/1: It is some time since the good ship ‘N. Boynton’, with the pioneer load of ‘jimmygrants’, left her moorings in [...] the United States for our shores.
1878		A. Aylward Transvaal of To-day 216: A raw emigrant and what Natalians call a Jimmy.
1878		J.H. Nicholson ‘Bunkum in Parvo’ in Opal Fever 112: We met i’ the forest a motley new chum, / Isn’t it odd, by the by, how few come / So far out west as Springsure Plains? / I suppose the poor jimmygrunts haven’t the brains.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Oct. 18/2: In a late issue you have under notice ‘Wolseley’s Shearing Machine,’ wherein you state that ‘any station hand, rouseabout, or jimmygrunt, may use the machine.’.
1887		Illus. London News 26 Feb. 2: South African [...] slang colloquialisms [...] A settler in his first year is known as a ‘jimmy.’ Food is called ‘scoff’ by natives in the service of Europeans; a trader among the Boers is a ‘smouse’; a drink is a ‘tot’ .
1890		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Colonial Reformer I 81: Joe, ye old, half-baked Jimmy.
1893		J. Demarr Adventures in Aus. 45: Anyone who had been in the colony for some length of time would know a newly arrived ‘jimmygrant’ at once.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 88: JIMMY OR JIMMIES: emigrants [sic] a corruption to ‘Jimmy Grant’ [...] Applied to State aided emigrants during the Seventies and Eighties [...] as generally used had a meaning almost as insulting as ‘pauper’.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Aug. 15/2: Was travelling on the N.S.W. Southern line recently with a newly-arrived ‘Jimmy Grant.’.
1913		C. Pettman Africanderisms.
1913		Truth (Sydney) 22 June 7/7: Weedy Jimmygrants [...] Certainly many of the Jimmies look a bit on the ‘weedy’ side, but appearances are sometimes deceptive [AND].
1915		Truth (Wellington) 22 May 7: Later Tommy came to Noo Zealand as an assisted ‘Jimmygrant’.
1920		H.J. Rumsky Pommies Introd.: In the early seventies [...] the colonial boys and girls.. ready to find a nickname, were fond of rhyming ‘immigrant’, ‘Jimmygrant’ [AND].
1923		Sun. Times (Perth) 7 Oct. 205/5: A mixed assortmnent of out-of-work immigrants and cheerful ex-Jimmygrants who evidently haled from the nearest pub.
1938		West. Australian (Perth) 8 Oct. 10/4: Australian slang words [...] The steps being: Immigrant — J-immy Grant — Jimmy Granite — Pomegranate — Pomy.
1948		(ref. to 1840) F. Irvine-Smith Streets of my City II 32: At the close of 1840, there were 2,500 settlers, or in whaler parlance, ‘Jimmy Grants’, upon its shoresnz .
1968		X. Herbert Disturbing Element 91: He still wore the heavy clumsy British type of clothing of the day. When we kids saw people on the street dressed like that we would yell at them: ‘Jimmygrants, Pommygranates, Pommies!’.
1988		(ref. to 1845) McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 63/1: Jimmy Grant an immigrant; rhyming slang of whalers, recorded by Edward Jerningham Wakefield in Adventure it New Zealand, 1845.
1998		Guardian 5 Sept. 35/2: Still, for jimmy Grants from Pomgolia, things could have been worse.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 89: Other examples of this process include: [...] jimmy grant immigrant, used in New Zealand since at least the 1840s and recorded in Australia in the 1850s.
2002		Pete’s Aussie Sl. Home Page 🌐 Jimmy Grant, Jimmy: an immigrant.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].