Green’s Dictionary of Slang

freed of one’s debts by becoming a bankrupt.

1762		Boston Eve. Post 2 Aug. n.p.: Another, lately whitewashed, proposed to me my setting him up again in business.
1770		R. King Frauds of London 46: Hundreds [...] dropped all their debts, and returned from prison thoroughly white-washed.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: One who has taken the benefit of an act of insolvency, to defraud his creditors, is said to have been whitewashed.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1817		W. Scott Rob Roy (1883) 4116: A white-washed Jacobite [...] had lately qualified himself to act as a justice.
1819		Sporting Mag. (N.S.) iv 30: Two baronets’ sons pleading to be white-washed, but remanded for fraud towards their creditors .
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 384: At the expiration of a short time, they are once more enabled, with the utmost nonchalance, to meet an old creditor with a new face [...] such are the purifying effects of being white-washed!
1836–7		Dickens Pickwick Papers (1999) 579: Sam, having been formally introduced to the white-washed gentleman and his friends.
1846		Thackeray Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche in Works III (1898) 422: I went out by the door a whitewashed man.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes I 110: It is a pity that the false hypocrite and true penitent should be ‘whitewashed’ together.
1858		R.S. Surtees Ask Mamma 256: Tom was fresh from being white-washed in the Insolvent Debtors’ Court.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1862		Liverpool Dly Post 15 July 8/6: He heard Barber say, ‘You whitewashed son of a bitch’.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 21 Mar. 7/3: And when his credit fails at last, / And things are looking ‘queer,’ / He gets ‘whitewashed,’ a process known / To every trader here.
1894		G.A. Sala Things I Have Seen II 62: A gentleman in difficulties [...] had only to file his petition and to get ‘whitewashed’ at the Court for Insolvent Debtors.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 95: Whitewashed, getting a certificate after insolvency.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.