Green’s Dictionary of Slang

dirty shirt n.1

[a bulla cake is a flat cake, sometimes with a central hole, made of flour and brown sugar and cooked by country people and the urban poor (wearers of SE dirty shirts); also known as a cartman’s hymn-book]

(W.I.) a bulla cake.

[WI]cited in Cassidy & LePage Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980).