Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. old clothes; also attrib.

1833		Satirist (London) 2 June 5/3: [T]he well-known Israelitish cry of ‘Clo! clo! old clo!’ .
[1843		R.S. Surtees Handley Cross (1854) 118: Clow for shell [...] Bes’h price, bes’h price].
1849		J.P. Townsend Rambles in New South Wales 267: Their [i.e. Jews] pursuits consist chiefly in furbishing up ‘old clo’ [...] which they palm upon Johnny Newcomes.
1851		Newcastle Jrnl 11 Jan. 6/4: The Old Clo’ Trade [...] Moses Barnett, 56, a Jew was indicted [etc.].
1858		Essex Standard 8 Jan. 3/6: Any Old Clo’ [...] everywhere [we] hear on behalf of the half-clad poor the cry — ‘Any old clo’’.
1868		Sportsman 8 Feb. 2/1: Notes on News [...] [A] Jew pawnbroker of the name Jackson—Jackson a Jew; wo shall be having Robinson and Jones next asking for per or demanding ‘ole clo’’ .
1877		Star (Guernsey) 17 Nov. 2/5: Solomon Isaacs and Moses Levy are ‘old clo’’ people.
1885		M. Davitt Leaves from a Prison Diary I 75: An ‘old clo’ man’ would not have speculated two and sixpence upon his entire outfit.
1887		Hants. Teleg. 29 Jan. 3/6: This market is the resort of the dealers whose discordant voices are heard crying ‘Old clo’’.
1892		I. Zangwill Children of the Ghetto 10: Few men could shuffle along more inoffensively or cry ‘Old Clo’ with a meeker twitter than Sleepy Sol.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Aug. 12/4: Soon it will be every girl her own beautifier. Small Susettes are selling old clo’ and the medicine bottles that they may buy the grease-pots with the proceeds, and emulate the gifts of Venus.
1909		Western Times (Devon) 28 June 2/3: Surely the bartering of germy old clo’ in a butter market is altogether wrong?
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 June 2nd sect. 12/6: The Jew, as a rule, is a clean and industrious citizen but what is the justification for this direful swamping of the three-ball and old clo’ industries?
1928		Western Dly Press 27 Jan. 9/7: The ‘Old Clo’s’ Man [...] ‘I am not the only rag gatherer who goes up Arley Hill’.
1931		Western Dly Press 13 May 11/3: ‘Any Old Clo’es’ An Advertisement invites housewives [...] to dispose of old clothing.
1949		Dundee Courier 13 Aug. 2/6: Money in Old Clo’ [...] a dealer called for old rags.
1967		(con. 1900s) S. Harris Hellhole 165: She tells about the ‘ol’ clo’ shops’ managed by businessmen with long beards and caps on their heads.

2. a derog. term for a Jew.

1842		Flash (NY) 3 July n.p.: After considerable manoeuvring Old Clo’ [i.e. a Jewish prize-fighter] caught Ginger Beer on the right eye.
1844		Punch 22 June 261/1: The party that claim / To take to themselves of Young England the name; / [...] / It seems after all are the tribe of Old Clo!
1879		London Life 28 June 5/1: I met the ‘English King of the Jews’ [...] a regular ‘old clo’ man’.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 15 Apr. 2/2: [A]nyway he twisted the letters they would always spell Jew [...] and the old clo’ men have things all their own way.
1891		G.R. Sims ‘A Charade’ Dagonet Ditties 135: He wore three hats upon his head, / And called aloud ‘Old clo’.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 3 Apr. 1/1: Old Clo Bloom has [...] recovered his clobber.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 403: Where the Henry Nevil’s sawbones and old clo?

3. ext. use of sense 2, an intellectual.

1891

‘’Arry on Arrius’ in Punch 26 Dec. 302/2: Dan the Dosser, a reglar Old Clo’ at dead langwidges. Classicks and such.