It made him feel like a callous deadbeat dad when the real culprit was an unlucky confluence of inescapable bills.
"Syndrome"
Thomas Hoover
It is not wise to allow the "deadbeat"-the remittance man, the gaunt shepherd with his starving flocks and herds, the free selector on an arid patch, the drink shanty where the rouseabouts and shearers knock down their cheques, the race meeting where high and low, rich and poor, are filled with the gambler's ill luck-fill the foreground of the picture of Australian life.
"An Autobiography"
Catherine Helen Spence
One long day in summer he'd had a tremendous chase after a wonderful bird, and he came home without it, deadbeat and out of temper.
"The Magnetic North"
Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)