Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK/Aus.) flashily dressed, overdressed.

1944		W. Cameron Day Is Coming 504: You might carry a umbrella, jus’ fer a extra touch o' respect-bility — but don’t go makin’ yerself up like a pox-doctor's clerk.
1951		G. Kersh Thousand Deaths of Mr Small 345: Don’t come dressed up like a pox-doctor's clerk. Come dressed like a human being.
1957		‘Nino Culotta’ They’re a Weird Mob (1958) 106: Gees, Nino, yer done up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Yer don’ need no coat an’ a collar an’ tie.
1963		R. McGregor-Hastie Compleat Migrant 106: Clerk, pox doctor’s, to be dressed up like a: to be over-dressed.
1968		J. Alard He who Shoots Last 205: Gees, Ragged. Ya is all done up like a pox doctor’s clerk.
1972		J. O’Grady It’s Your Shout, Mate! 16: Another bloke done up like a pox-doctor’s clerk.
1976		D. Ireland Glass Canoe (1982) 15: They [...] ran into another mob of guys that shouldn’t have been out on the street. Only kids and dressed like pox doctors’ clerks.
1983		J. Byrell (con. 1959) Up the Cross 8: ‘Wheredya come by your china? [...] He comes up like a pox doctor’s clerk’.
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 34: Lair: A flash bastard who plays up like billy-oh and dresses up like a pox doctor’s clerk.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 198: Other uses of up include the sartorial dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk dressed in a lurid, flashy style.
2006		Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 18 May 🌐 The overt, dedicated and strident mocker of Christian dogma was prancing around the chapel [...] done up like a pox-doctor’s clerk.
2006		www.biblebelievers.org.au 🌐 If you are a man, don’t dress like the pox doctor’s clerk.

extremely drunk.

1951

K. Bennett Fabulous Wink 59: I am drunker than a pox-doctor’s clerk, and I love you all the same.

an insult.

1958		C. Lee diary 9 Feb. in Eight Bells & Top Masts (2001) 52: I’ve got a couple of spots [...] The Mate says my face looks as mucky as the bum on a pox doctor’s clerk.
2012		D. Whish-Wilson ‘In Savage Freedom’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] Tighter than a stocking on a chicken’s lip. Face like a pox-doctor’s clerk.

(UK/Aus.) describing someone who is very smartly (too smartly) dressed.

1997		(con. 1800s) A. Warburton ‘Ozzyisms’ in Ozwords Nov. 🌐 I’ve read that people whose surname is Clark/e are nicknamed ‘Nobby’ because of an early nineteenth-century word for ‘well-dressed’. As in: He was a nobby clerk. (The well-dressed clerk would have been a ready figure of fun in those days to the rural and undustrial poor. To be ‘got up like a pox-doctor’s clerk’ was a popular contemptuous epithet that still appeals.).
2004		Sydney Morning Herald 9 Jan. 🌐 And it would be a very brave Australian male who, seeing his partner dressed out in haute couture, would now declare that she was ‘all dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk’.
2006		Inside Time (UK) Sept. 🌐 There, sat in an armchair dressed like a pox doctor’s clerk, with a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, was Brendan.

very lucky.

1934		Sussex Co. Mag. 8 405/2: THE POX DOCTOR’S CLERK The other day a friend of mine was out hunting, and four foxes were found in the small withy-bed, when a farm labourer exclaimed to the master: ‘As lucky as the pox doctor’s clerk’.
1945		W. Sussex Gaz. 1 Nov. 4/5: ‘He’s as lucky as the pox doctor’s clerk!’ exclaimed Mrs. Paddick.

to smell strongly, i.e. of cheap, pungent after-shave or perfume.

1949		A. Jacob Scenes from Bourgeois Life 105: What’s that stinko [...] You smell like a pox doctor’s clerk.
1960		A. Burgess Doctor Is Sick (1972) 106: ‘I do smell like a pox-doctor’s clerk today.’ He sniffed elaborately at his left lapel. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?’.