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I could be way off base but I feel like this might possibly be an early version or a play on the phrase “I should worry”, a sarcastic slangy saying that was based off a Yiddish saying, either “nisch gefiddellt” or “isch ka bibble?” (I should worry?). Apparently, according to German Jews at the time, “nisch gefiddellt” was the actually phrase and “isch ka bibble” was more likely gibberish or a corruption of the original. “We should..” and “I should..” and “You should..” phrases were everywhere.
The saying really blew up in 1913 when a popular song by the name Isch Ga Bibble was released.
Evansville Press, Indiana, June 28, 1913:
Eventually it became “what, me worry?” which is well known as the catchphrase of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman.
Ah hah! Here we go, anyway. From
A Dictionary of
Slang, Jargon & Cant Embracing English, American, and Anglo-Indian
Slang, Pidgin English, Tinkers’ Jargon and Other Irregular Phraseology, published 1889:
The Star-Democrat, Easton, Maryland, September 1, 1939
In the dulcet tones of Mrs. Cuthbert, this summons catches our hero in quite a serious predicament. There he is in what he calls his “workshop”, right in the middle of an important surgical operation on a broken taken.
Defense housing, Bantam, Connecticut, January 1942
Three-year-old Ann Heath, daughter of Fred
Heath, who operates a turret lathe in the Warren McArthur casting room.
She has her own little footstool so that she can wash her own hands in
the sink of the bathroom in the four-room defense housing unit where the
Heaths live. Ann had quite a trying time getting used to the size of
the new apartment, after having lived most of her life with her parents
in a single furnished room in Torrington.
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