1678, John Phillips, “Book V”, in Maronides, or, Virgil Travesty, page 15:
Nor let your women there appear / With dirty ſmock-ſleeves, foul head-geare, / With Cover-ſlut from Neck to Toe, / As Maids to morning Lectures go.
1708 April 24, A Trip to Barbarous Scotland; republished in “Reports on Ireland, Scotland, America and the East”, in Ewald, William Bragg, editor, Rogues Royalty And Reporters[1], Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956, page 152:
The Women are commonly two handed Tools, strong posted Timber, they dislike English Men because they have no Legs, or (like themselves) posts to walk on; the meaner go bare foot and bare-head, with two black Elflocks on either side their Faces; some of them have scarce any Cloaths at all, save part of their Bed-cloaths pinn'd about their Shoulders, and their Children have nothing else on them but a little Blanket; those Women that can purchase Plads, need not bestow much upon other Cloaths, these Coversluts being sufficient.
a.1796, Edmund Burke, “Letter IV: To the Earl Fitzwilliam”, in Letters on a Regicide Peace; republished in The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, volume 2, London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1834, page 367:
Great Britain was not there. Almost in despair, I hope she will never, in any rags and coversluts of infamy, be seen at such an exhibition.
1808, John Wolcot, “To A Female Head”, in One More Peep at the Royal Academy; republished in The Works of Peter Pindar, Esq.[2], volume 5, London: J. Walker, G. Wilkie and J. Robinson, G. Robinson, and G. Goulding and Co., 1812, page 374:
Pert, smirking Miss, you seem to sally / From Dyot Street, or Black Boy Alley; / And no small consequence you seem to feel. / Pray, Miss, go back; your trade pursue; / Put on your cover-slut of blue, / And stick to tripe, sheep's-trotters, and cow-heel.
I have heard some ladies observe, that a long wrap pelisse is an excellent cover-slut.
1827, Samuel William Ryley, The Itinerant, in Scotland[4], volume 7, page 170:
And Miss Corkscrew, dat I call de crooked lady, Mrs. M'Kinley's niece, holding up her head like a drinking hen, walked about like an enraged turkey-cock, took up her cover-slut, called a shawl, and followed dem as quick as petticoats would permit.
1846, Samuel Carter Hall, Ann Kent Hall, “Kildare”, in Ireland: Its Scenery, Character &c.[5], volume 2, footnote, page 272:
The Irish cloak forms very graceful drapery; the material falls well, and folds well. It is usually large enough to envelop the whole person ; and the hood is frequently drawn forward to shield the face of the wearer from sun, rain, or wind. Yet we would fain see its general use dispensed with. A female in the lower ranks of life cares but little for the other portions of her dress if she has "a good cloak;" and certainly her ordinary appearance would be more thought of, if the huge "cover-slut" were not always at hand to hide dilapidations in her other garments.
2007, Miles Hawke, “Sup with the Devil”, in The Black Pearl, page 130:
Miss Pernickety wiped her hands in her cover-slut and until then had congenially barred his way to table, all the while girlishly fluttering her eyelashes despite the sting in her cheeks burning with insult.
The phrase, "to keep up appearances," which is supposed to accord with a decent pride, is a coverslut of the loosest morality. People who begin by keeping up appearances commonly end by making the appearances keep them.
1851, Charles C. Chase, “God's Plan for Educating Man”, in The Lectures Delivered Before the American Institute of Instruction, at Northampton, Mass., Aug. 1850, Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, page 22:
Miserable delusion! misguided man! The sickness of your son is a base "coverslut" for his laziness; his independence is but the stubbornness of an ungoverned will; and his charge of prejudice is but a proof that the teacher knows how corrupt he is.
She did not hesitate to be the "coverslut" of the king's adulterous intercourse, or to weaken the affection of Louis for Madame de Montespan, to whom she owed her position, her residence in France, her bread.