broker than the 10 commandments

[George Thompson]

Barry posted on this not long ago, citing a passage from a book by
Louis Armstrong, as quoted in a review, from 1954.  Wilson Gray
responded that the expression was old and familiar, and someone else
also responded, but if I read the archives correctly no one produced an
example from before 1954.

>From Leave It to Psmith, by P. G. Wodehouse, originally published in
1923:
[Freddie Threepwood:] "Are you really broke?"
[Psmith:] "As broke as the Ten Commandments."
p. 91

I am reading the edition by the Overlook Press, Woodstock & N. Y., 2003

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.