Green’s Dictionary of Slang

gossamer n.

a hat.

1838		R.S. Surtees Jorrocks Jaunts (1874) 248: Real good hats. None o’ your nasty gossamers, or dog-hair ones.
1839		Crim.-Con. Gaz. 14 June 197/1: L—d, who sports a broad brim goss.
1841		‘The Four And Ninepenny Hat’ Dublin Comic Songster 102: For each one wears a goss, sirs.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 17 Jan. 3/1: Very fow gentlemen unbleat with extensive credit with their batters like to have their gossamers flattened .
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 46: GOSS, a hat.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor II 43/2: I have sold hats from 6d. to 3s. 6d., but very seldom 3s. 6d. The 3s. 6d. ones would wear out two new gossamers, I know.
1866		Wild Boys of London I 19/2: ‘Yah!’ came a derisive shout from behind. ‘Who starched yer collar? Whoo! hi! How much for his goss?’.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 208: The English use of beaver for a hat has entirely ceased, giving way to ‘gossamer,’ or, in modern slang, ‘goss.’.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 11 Dec. 4/4: A tall, gaunt fellow in a suit of shoddy black, with a crape ‘twister’ on his ‘gossamer’ of some eighteen inches in depth.
1888		Harper’s Mag. LXXVII 139: Flinging off his gossamer and hanging it up to drip into the pan of the hat rack [F&H].
1892		Gloucs. Chron. 2 Jan. 5/4: [I]t was a ‘guinea hat to a gossamer’ that it [i.e. a covert] held a fox.
1914		E. Wittmann ‘Clipped Words’ in DN IV:ii 122: goss, from gossamer.