poverty-struckadj.

?1750 in Catal. Prints: Polit. & Personal Satires (Brit. Mus.) (1877) III. i. 780 Dam 'um they are all Poverty Struck.

1782 T. Pasley Jrnl. 18 Jan. in Private Sea Jrnls. (1931) 224 They are altogether a low, mean, poverty-struck sett.

1801 D. Wordsworth Jrnl. 29 Dec. (1941) I. 98 A miserable, poverty-struck looking woman.

1856 ‘E. S. Delamer’ Flower Garden 3 The cypress is a magnificent ornament to the gardens of the south of Europe... It is respectable in the south of England; shabby-genteel higher up the island; in the north, miserable and poverty-struck.

1874 Times 17 Sept. 7/3 The Acts requiring that children employed in factories or workshops shall attend school at least half the time are satisfied with a quality of school..below the requirements of the Elementary Education Act. Nor is it easy to mend matters in face of the poverty-struck parents, the grasping employers, and the local feeling on the subject.

1947 Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica) 17 June 16/1 A deeply disappointed, weather-beaten poverty-struck farmer declared ‘Chuck farming, son. Farming is no good.’

1971 G. Avery Likely Lad i. 11 Proper poverty-struck they are. Now give over talking and go along with Willy.

2004 Bristol Evening Post (Nexis) 13 Apr. 33 By the time Mary was 16 she was living in London, and her poverty-struck mother decided to quickly marry her off to a solicitor called Robinson.