Green’s Dictionary of Slang

not care twopence v.

to not care at all.

1613		Beaumont & Fletcher Coxcomb V i: No; nor I care not twopence, those are toys.
1702		Vanbrugh False Friend Act I: I did not care sixpence for the Slut before, but now I’ll have her Maidenhead in a Week.
1785		M. Lonsdale Spanish Rivals II iii: I don’t care two-pence for your daughter.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) I 20: For you, Achilles, / I care not two-pence.
1837		R.M. Bird Nick of the Woods III 260: Not caring a four-pence ha’penny for the whole everlasting set of them.
1838		Comic Almanack May 136: She’d say, ‘John Budd, I doesn’t care / A twopence for the beaks’.
1842		Comic Almanack Nov. 336: Who cares twopence for Constantinople.
1849		Thackeray Pendennis I 77: Lord Paddington did not care twopence for the most beautiful print.
c.1850		F.M. Whitcher Widow Bedott Papers (1883) 10: I never cared tuppence for the deacon.
1862		H. Kingsley Ravenshoe II 238: I believe she don’t care twopence for you.
1867		J. Greenwood Unsentimental Journeys 180: He doesn’t care twopence whether the Derby laurels are carried off by Cambuscan or the rankest outsider.
1870		Sportsman (London) 9 Apr. 4/1: Dr. Guthrie, who doesn’t care what vulgar people call a twopenny-ticket which way [the decision] goes.
1886		‘’Arry’s Spring Thoughts’ in Punch 17 Apr. 185: I wouldn’t give tuppence for many a Marquis’s tile.
1903		J. Furphy Such is Life 221: I wouldn’t care tuppence if her ladyship snoke roun’ tellin’ people I was forty.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 50: ‘I don’t care tuppence about your health, my man.’ [...] ‘I don’t care a penny-three-fardens about it myself,’ he rejoined.
1920		Marvel 21 Aug. 14: I don’t care tuppence for the boxing kangeroo.
1921		D.L. Sayers Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1977) 111: Oh, I don’t care twopence about the corpse.
1929		J.B. Priestley Good Companions 154: There wasn’t a chap in Bruddersford who would care twopence where Jess Oakroyd was.
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 241: I believe you don’t care tuppence about my worrrk and the revolution.
1942		A. Christie Body in the Library (1959) 128: She didn’t care tuppence for Mr Jefferson.
1957		G. Kersh Fowlers End (2001) 54: Only don’t let on you know about it or I wouldn’t give tuppence for your life.
1962		A. Wesker Chips with Everything II x: I don’t give tuppence what you say.
1976		J. Rosenthal Bar Mitzvah Boy Scene 66: He doesn’t care tuppence what other people want.
1999		C. Logue Prince Charming 4: Very few people give tuppence for your Mr Eliot.
2018		C. Hammer Scrublands [ebook] He’d been arrogant, no doubt about it, not caring tuppence for the opinions of colleagues, the plodders and the office schemers.