The great unwashed

Meaning

The common, lower classes; the hoi polloi.

Origin

This rather disparaging term was coined by the Victorian novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He used it in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

"He is certainly a man who bathes and ‘lives cleanly’, (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed)."

See also, it was a dark and stormy night.