Where does the saying 'Use your loaf' come from?

Cockney rhyming slang - use your loaf of bread = head.

Cockney slang, I believe, which made the rhymed association between "loaf of bread" and "head".

Not what I'm after, sorry. It dates back round about 300 years ago.

[May 25 04 1:42 AM] mountside writes:

It comes from a war not sure which, a soldier would put his daily ration of bread on the end of his bayonet with his helmet on top, this confused the enemy into thinking that it was the soldier and the enemy would shoot, the soldiers partner would then shoot the enemy.

ok - I've found this:
"The other day I watched part of a low-budget hastily-cobbled-together TV programme about how the Industrial Revolution stimulated the development of military hardware (or possibly vice versa). There was a sequence in which a soldier in the Napoleonic wars stuck a loaf of bread on his bayonet, put his helmet on top and poked it out from behind a tree, so that a French sniper fired at it, was thus located, and shot dead: well done, that fellow with the bread!
The telly pundit who was presenting the programme waved his arms about a bit, gave a sly grin, and said “And that’s where we get the expression ‘to use one’s loaf’”!
“That’s interesting”, I thought, “I never knew that”!
Then I thought, “Hang on, that’s rubbish: ‘Use your loaf’ must be rhyming slang, loaf of bread, head…..oh, for God’s sake.”
So what was that about? Did the presenter really believe what he said, or was it a heavy-handed spoof? The sequence was irrelevant to the subject of the programme, so either way it was fatuous."
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