Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. money.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Cly, Money . . . Let’s strike his Cly, let’s get his Money from him; also a Pocket. Filed a Cly, Pickt a Pocket.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 204: Cly, money.
1725		Life and Glorious Actions of [...] Jonathan Wilde 26: A Servant is sent up to know [...] if he has the Cly thick upon him, viz. good store of Money.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1741		Ordinary of Newgate Account 31 July 🌐 [He] pull’d out all the † Cole they had in their Cly, which amounted to sixteen § Ridges.
1775		‘The Potato Man’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 54: A moll I keep that sells fine fruit / There’s no one brings more cly.
1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 141: I have done one cull twice for his cligh and bit; if you’ll hold his smiters up, and I should see him again to-morrow, I’ll do him out and out.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1887		W.E. Henley ‘Culture in the Slums’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 181: Strudwick he makes me flash my cly.

2. (also clie, cloy, clye) a pocket, also a purse or wallet.

1660		‘Megg. Spencer’ A Strange and True Conference 4: pS]he div’d into his pocket and foyld hiis cloy of six pounds in a canvase bag.
c.1698		see sense 1.
1703		Hell Upon Earth 5: Cly, a Pocket.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 204: [...] Filed a cly, i.e., picked a pocket.
1728		Defoe Street Robberies Considered 31: Clie, a Pocket.
1728		J. Dalton Narrative of Street-Robberies 8: He push’d the Woman down; Rawlins snatch’d her Pocket [...] Branch was taken into Custody, when Rawlins and he hyk’d off with the Cly.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1753		J. Poulter Discoveries (1774) 30: The Files go before the Cull, and try his Cly; and if they feel a Bit, cry Gammon.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1789		Both Sides of the Gutter part II 11: I lugs out my cly.
a.1790		‘The Flash Man of St. Giles’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 74: She pick’d up the flats as they pass’d by / And I mill’d their wipes from their side clye.
1794		Sporting Mag. June IV 180/2: No grunters in the clye.
1807		H. Tufts Autobiog. (1930) 293: Touching a cly signifies robbing a pocket.
c.1811		‘A Leary Mot’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 77: For he valued neither Cove nor Swell, for he had wedge snug in his cly.
1819		P. Egan Key to the Picture of the Fancy going to a Fight 17: [H]e has [...] blowed out his buffer well with the last mag left in his clie.
1821		D. Haggart Autobiog. 25: The screaves were in his benjy cloy.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 221: The little mot [...] is trying it on Jerry’s clie.
1824		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 28 Nov. 349/2: A one hundred pound note, which Dick planted in his clie.
1828		‘The Song of the Young Prig’ in C. Hindley James Catnach (1878) 171: Frisk the cly, and fork the rag.
1833		‘The Cly-Pecker’ in Swell!!! or, Slap-Up Chaunter 38: As these palls were at snooze, this old bawd pick’d the cly.
1840		‘The St Giles’s Flash Man’ in Facetious Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 250: [as a.1790].
1841		‘Poll Newry, The Dainty Flag-Hopper’ in Gentleman’s Spicey Songster 30: O! have you not heard of Poll Newry, / Who lives in the hundreds of Drury; / Beware of her eye, for many’s the cly, / She has shook in the hundreds of Drury.
1842		Flash (NY) 3 July n.p.: He had always a few ‘bob’ on handm which he frely melted among the ‘coves vot fyked the klyes’.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 206: For I am the gal for a fake and a cly, / And I lush til the dew is falling.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 26 Feb. 1/4: So I gets [...] these ere crabs, watch, and togs, so I’m a Svell un vith a caser in this ere cly.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open 103: Cly or cle, a pocket.
1852		Kendal Mercury 17 Apr. 6/1: For cleaning out clys his forks they vas made.
1852		Launceston Examiner (Tas.) 24 Dec. 862/1: [W]e should from his volubility have inferred that he had followed the calling of ‘public patterers,’ who affect to be ministers, and preach in the open air to collect crowds for the benefit of those whose ‘mawleys’ dip deep into the ‘cly’.
1858		A. Mayhew Paved with Gold 69: S’elp me! if a mauley like that there ain’t worth a jemmy a day to a kenobe at wiring. Why, they’re just made for hooking a fogle out of a clye.
1863		Story of a Lancashire Thief 9: There was Hammer Bill, always on the look-out for what he could stow in his cly.
1867		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 19 Oct. n.p.: Another bloke found that someone had been through his ‘cly’.
1877		J. Diprose London Life 80: I’ve got a teviss (shilling) left in my clye (pocket).
1882		Bristol Magpie 20 July 3/1: The only change for that there piece / ’ll be from your cly to his.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 2: Cly - Pocket.
1891		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 15 Oct. 6/4: The business will put a ‘quid’ or a ‘thick un’ or a ‘James’ in their ‘clyes,’ that is, if the ‘bossman’ hasn’t been ‘coopwered’ (i.e. spoilt — learnt wisdom).
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. [as 1882].