Green’s Dictionary of Slang

lace; thus driz fencer, one who sells lace; driz camesa/kemesa, a lace-adorned shirt, driz lay, lace-selling.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 178: My thimble of ridge, and my driz kemesa; / All my togs were so niblike and splash.
1840		G.W.M. Reynolds (trans.) V. Hugo Last Day of Condemned 39: Of velvet driz herr gown shall be, / Her bed-gear of the best kemesee.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 33: DRIZ, lace [...] DRIZ FENCER, a person who sells lace.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 219/1: Scotch Mary, with ‘driz’ (lace), bound to Dover and back, please God. [Ibid.] I 387/2: Among street-people the lace is called ‘driz,’ and the sellers of it ‘driz-fencers’.
1868		Sportsman 2 Dec. 2/2: Notes on News [...] The ‘driz lay’—so it was called tho fraternity of cadgers—has almost collapsed.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1884		‘Career of a Scapegrace’ in Leicester Chron. 10 May 12/1: A loud-mouthed Irish woman, hawking ‘driz’.
1889–90		Barrère & Leland Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1892		Burnley Exp. 5 Mar. 2/5: In the kitchen he found a woman — a driz (lace) hawker —making ready for an early tea.