Obs. A wooden dish with a lid carried and clacked by beggars as an appeal for contributions; a CLAP-DISH.
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., III. ii. 135. Your beggar of fifty: and his vse was, to put a ducket in her Clack-dish.
1608. Middleton, Fam. Love (N.). Ger. Can you think I get my living by a bell and a clack-dish? Dry. By a bell and a clack-dish? how’s that? Ger. Why, by begging, sir.
1861. Wynter, Soc. Bees, 242. At the door of some alms-house, an old woman may still be seen with her clack-dish before her at certain seasons of the year—the last of her race.
