what is the origin of the phrase “dropped like a cork leg”?

In the 1800s when amputee had recovered safely and sufficiently enough to begin wearing a wooden leg there were various types to choose from. The broad division was between the expensive and more aesthetically pleasing artificial limbs also popularly know as “cork legs,” and the common wooden legs of what we might call the “peg” or “pin” variety. Cork legs were often articulated and included various springs and joints. “Everybody was walking about St. Peter’s and the Vatican on somebody else’s cork legs” writes Dickens of tourists in Rome in Little Dorrit . “These legs were called ‘cork legs’ in England, not because they were made of cork, for they were not, but because the best kind of them were made in London in Cork Street” Common wooden legs by contrast did not offer jointed movement, and were widespread among the poorer classes. They were, however, also sometimes worn for practical reasons by those who could afford the more expensive kind.

Austin writes of his experiments with both types: “After employing at great expense one of those London manufacturers of mechanical contrivances, who profess to remedy all defects, I found that the common wooden, or Jack Hatchway, leg is the best and most useful. In fact, no artificially formed leg to imitate the natural limb would stand the work which my active habits required of it. Of “cork legs” which he “constructed from [his] own idea,” he comments: “Although I could walk exceedingly well in a room, or on smooth ground, with my improved contrivance, such legs are not suitable for rough work. Finding the springs, which move the foot, continually giving way, I finally gave up using the artificial leg; and have since been enabled with the more homely-looking wooden pin .

From the above it can be deduced that a person wearing a cork leg is pretty unstable and will easily be knocked to the ground(dropped).

Corked Leg