Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a wig, esp. one made of worsted; thus bloke with the jasey, a judge.

1780		‘Nancy, I have lost my Wig’ Lover’s Jubilee 7: Nancy, if you find my wig, / Bring to me my Jazey.
1781–2		J. Messink Choice of Harlequin I viii: Your jazy pays the garnish, unless the fees you tip.
c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Jazey. A bob wig.
a.1790		C. Dibdin ‘Smoke the Beau’ Collection of Songs II 156: The belles put on jazies, / And the beaux sported now their own hair.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) .
1796		Sporting Mag. Jan. VII 222/1: For who would bear / [...] / The insolence of powder and the spurns / Unpowder’d Jaseys of the powdered get.
c.1805		‘The Wig Gallery’ Jovial Songster 29: See in this jazey what a twirl, / ’twill suit a young or ancient girl.
1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1820		‘Widow Waddle, of Chickabiddy Lane’ in Merry Melodist 6: Tommy Tick he dress’d in pompadour, with double channel’d pumps. And look’d, when he’d his jazy on, just like the Jack of Trumps.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue [as cit. 1796].
1832		Satirist (London) 15 Jan. 22/1: Your locks they are thinned, but a jazy / Will juvenile make you again!
1832		Satirist (London) 6 May 147/1: I claps on a Counsellor's jasy / To look like a limb o’ the law.
1840		‘May Day Morning’ in Capt. Morris’s Songs in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 221: I clapp’d on a councilor’s jazey, / To look like a limb of the law.
1840		R. Barham ‘Lay of St. Cuthbert’ in Ingoldsby Legends (1842) 225: He dashed off his ‘Vicary,’ / Stamped on the jasey / As though he were crazy.
1847		R.F. Walond Paddiana I 249: The wig seemed to rather strike him [...] He exclaimed gravely, but with a comic expression, ‘Bedad, that’s a great jazey!’.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 11 42/2: Whether she rejoiced in a coaxing jasey, or had red natural hair.
1860		Huddersfield Chron. 16 June 3/5: Put some powder in your jasey, you divil’s own body-box-maker.
1869		Thackeray Lyra Hibernica ‘Molony’s Lament’ n.p.: When spring with its buds and its dasies, Comes out in her beauty and bloom, Them tu’ll never think of new jasies [F&H].
1873		Sl. Dict. 202: Jazey a wig. A corruption of JERSEY, the name for flax prepared in a peculiar manner, and of which common wigs were formerly made.
1881		Newcastle Courant 2 Sept. 6/5: He doffed his coat, concealed his fiery strummel under a jasey.
1895		Sporting Times No. 1653 9: There is nothing to be ashamed of in wearing a jasey [F&H].
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 39: Jasey, a wig or great quantity of hair on the head.
1901		Argus (Melbourne) 20 Sept. 6/4: Those who give evidence against him ‘mount the pieter,’ [sic] he is tried by ‘the bloke with the jasey,’ or the high bloke, condemned by the twelve apostles, or the twelve godfathers.
1908		Sun. Times (Perth) 17 May 4/8: And the shrieking grown-up girl, / Sweet anathema will hurl, / At her jasey out of curl.
1911		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 22 June 2/2: Esterhazy / All jools from his jasey to his diamond boots.
1938		J.B. Booth Sporting Times 75: A prim person with corkscrew curls [...] with what appeared to be a tiny doyley pinned above her jasey.

2. (US) a man with a great deal of facial hair.

1859

Matsell Vocabulum 46: jazey A man with an enormous quantity of hair on his head and face.