Where did the word cheapskate come from?

Answer 1

Many decades ago, children's roller skates were made of metal, and clamped on to children's shoes. They were tightened with a small metal "key" which would pull brackets in between the soles of the shoes and the upper leather bodies of the shoes.

Then there was a leather strap that was affixed to the back of the skate near the heel of the shoe, and it went over the top of the skater's ankle, to help hold the skate on the foot.

Metal shoe skates were used almost exclusively in streets to avoid cracks in the sidewalk that might make you take a nasty fall. Even so, these skates were so cheap and shoddy they often fell off, leaving the skater with one skate on and one dangling by the leather strap as the skater went skate, clomp, skate, clomp to a sudden stop.

They were truly... cheap skates.

as I understand it back in the early 1900's there there was a woman named Kate Robinson, she was a panhandler and inherited a fortune but continued to beg. So people would tell thrifty people you are as cheap as Kate and it got shortened to cheapskate