Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. counterfeit coins.

1877

W.H. Thompson Five Years’ Penal Servitude 240: A very large ‘business’ is done in ‘shise’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1, spec. fraud .

1938

F.D. Sharpe Sharpe of the Flying Squad 219: The professional welsher is a very different sort of person. The Shice or Block of Ice Mob as these gentry are known usually work in fairly large numbers and go out for pretty big money [...] A gang known as Spider’s Mob went in for this Shice game.

3. anything worthless; nothing at all.

1826		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 26 Mar. 485/1: Dick endeavour [sic] to fib, but ‘it was all chise’.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 8 Jan. 2/6: A dirty, curly-headed snob, of the half-schneider half-shice genus.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 91: SCHICE, nothing; ‘to do anything for schice,’ to get no payment.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 24/1: Blast my hys if I’m going to ‘sling’ my ‘sugar’ for ‘shise’.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1902		Sun. Times (Perth) 27 Apr. 2/2: It is Sydney to ‘shice’ that Mug M.L.A. will not win above a century over the game.

4. a complete failure, a ‘wash-out’.

1934

P. Allingham Cheapjack 866: ‘I think we’re all in for a dead shice,’ said Doncaster Jock [...] I took it that he meant a wash-out, and agreed with him.