Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a fool, a stupid person.

c.1591		Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona III i: Fie on thee, jolthead! thou canst not read.
1605		Chapman & Jonson Eastward Ho! II i: Why, ’sblood, you jolthead, where I am?
1639		J. Taylor Juniper Lecture 98: I wish thee no more to trouble thy foolish Jolthead with studying to curbe or bridle me.
1649		Man in the Moon 28 May - 5 June 67: How now ye pitiful wretched Ox-headed Citts, ye eternal Cow-babies, ye illiterate joltheads.
1653		Rabelais Author’s Prologue (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel I 7: But hearken joltheads [...] or dickens take ye, remember to drink a health to me.
1663		J. Wilson Cheats V i: Methought I was married to a man with a great jolt-head.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Jolter-head, a vast large Head; also Heavy and Dull.
1705–07		N. Ward Hudibras Redivivus I:12 13: That when the poor distressed jade, / By chance should turn his jolter Head.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1748		Dyche & Pardon New General Eng. Dict. (5th edn).
1751		Smollett Peregrine Pickle (1964) 78: This gentleman, whose name was Mr. Jacob Jolter, had been a schoolfellow with the parson.
1759–67		Sterne Tristram Shandy (1949) 597: And here [...] shall I be called as many blockheads, numsculs, doddypoles, dunderheads, ninnyhammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nicompoops, sh--t-a-beds – and other unsavory appellations.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 31: Hanging his great jolter-head / O’er the salt sea, he sobb’d.
1779		Caledonian Mercury 4 Oct. 4/1: Thou are a most notorious blunderer [...] Jolterhead!
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1794		Reading Mercury 8 Dec. 4/2: They sent a number of constables, police officers, etc. who came into the room [...] singing, ‘God save great Jolter-heads’.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) I 43: Hanging his great jolter head / O’er the salt sea.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1816		Cobbett’s Wkly Political Register 9 Mar. 11/1: Oh! you, the jolterheads in the country, do not care about the press.
1816		Liverpool Mercury 8 Mar. 2/3: Squire Jolterhead, sitting by his parlour fire [...] sees Squire Cracklouse, the army tailor.
1819		Examiner 5 Sept. 1/2: Oh the indecent jolthead!
1822		(con. early 17C) W. Scott Fortunes of Nigel I 205: I should like to know whether her little conceited noddle, or her father’s old crazy, calculating jolter-pate, breeds most whimsies.
1827		Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 55: He, however, succeeded in appeasing the wrath of master Jolterhead.
1830		W. Cobbett Rural Rides (1885) I 268: When the war was over, the jolterheads thought they would get gold back again to make all secure.
1831		Satirist (London) 6 Nov. 245/3: [H]is Lordship boasted Cambridge stakes / He’d sweep with any jolt-head.
1843–44		Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit (1995) 785: Have it taken from him by two crazy old jolter-heads who go and act a play about it.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 18 July 3/1: Lewis Leon, a paunchy specimen of diminutive hediousness [sic], whose sallow jolterhead matched better with a Patagonian, than oneof his scrimping dimensions.
1850		E.V. Kenealy Goethe: a New Pantomime 189: Swindler, liar, jolthead, bully!
1859		H. Kingsley Recollections of G. Hamlyn (1891) 16: The jolter-head thought it was a sandpiper, but he wasn’t much further out than you with your jacksnipes. Bah!
1866		Eve. Teleg. (Phila., PA) 20 Nov. 6/1: Jolterhead, the eminent photographic artist of Lower Pighurst, who has accomplished no end of cartes de visites of the mighty Bunglebutt.
1872		Grantham Jrnl 13 Jan. 2/5: Sam, the bailiff [...] Well skilled to take the jolthead in.
1885		‘’Arry on the Elections’ Punch 12 Dec. 277/2: Wot’s the good of hus starting the game hup in Town in so proper a way / If them turnip-fed jolterheads muck in, and give Joe the best of the play?
1896		Omaha Dly Bee (NE) 26 Aug. 4/6: Rantipole - Now see here! If I can persuade you that your tooth doesn’t ache at all, you ought to feel relieved, oughtn’ you? Jolterhead - I suppose so.
1910		Lexington Gaz. (VA) 10 Aug. 7/6: He said you were a numskull, a mollycoddle and a jolterhead.