"rawhead and crossbones"

[Jonathan Lighter]

This colorful blend, a synonymous with the universally current "skull and crossbones," does not appear in OED.

  1861 Capt. David D. Porter, in D. M. Sullivan _USMC in Civil War_ I  214:  A bottle of corrosive sublimate with rawheads and crossbones all over it.

  The writer was a prominent naval officer (1813-91), born in Chester, Pa.

  Thackeray used the phrase earlier:

  1845 W. M. Thackeray _Irish Sketch-Book_  ch. xvi: Then there is Lombard Street, otherwise called Deadman's Lane, with a raw-head and cross-bones and a “memento mori” over the door where the dreadful tragedy of the Lynches was acted in 1493.

  OED has _rawhead_ solely as "the name of a nursery bug-bear, usually coupled with _bloody-bones_."

  JL


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