What is the origin of (and thinking behind) the idiom 'hang [someone] out to dry...

This fixed expression (ie in common use) is also an idiom when used, as it usually is, figuratively, the direct object referring to the person who is the victim. It is very transparent, and the meaning is supplied by dictionaries as well as the article below. It is also apparently fairly recent. But what is its detailed etymology?

Dictionary coverage of 'hang [someone] out to dry'

Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, second edition (2013) has this entry for the expression:

hang out to dry Abandon someone to danger , as in The squadron withdrew and just let us hang out to dry. The expression alludes toi hanging wet laundry on a clothesline. {Slang; 1960s}

But J.E, Lighter, Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1997) offers a significantly different definition:

hang out {or up} to dry to punish or vanquish; overcome completely. [Cited examples:] 1982 Medved Hospital 178: If you...voice your opinion too loud, then you're going to be hung up to dry. 1984 N.Y. Post (Aug. 13) 41: The old Panamanian smoothie hung Angel Cordero Jr. out to dry like the family wash. 1989 L. Roberts Full Cleveland 194: It was me that had to split before I got hung out to dry.

Robert Chapman & Barbara Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang, third edition (1995) largely concurs with Lighter:

hang someone out to dry by 1980s 1 v phr To punish someone severely, esp as a scapegoat [examples omitted] 2 v phr To defeat utterly; =CLOBBER [example omitted] 3 v phr baseball by 1980s To catch a runner in a run-down; pick off a base runner [example omitted]

None of the earlier slang dictionaries I consulted (including the 1986 edition of Dictionary of American Slang) address the expression at all.

Very early instances of 'hang [someone] out to dry'

A very early figurative use of the expression, albeit with a different meaning, occurs in Frederic Hill, The Six Degrees of Crime: or, Wine, Women, Gambling, Theft, Murder and the Scaffold: A Melo Drama, in Six Parts (1834), reprinted in The Modern Standard Drama: A Collection of the Most Popular Acting Plays (1846):

Ferdinand. By the way, Lacaille, what became of your brother Rosignol?

Lacaille. Rosignol? Poor fellow! {Draws out a ragged handkerchief—wipes his eyes.} I never can think of him without being obliged to blow my nose; Rosignol, my friend, met with an accident one day in the court of Assizes.

Ferdinand. An accident? What was it? One of the old fashioned sort, eh?

Lacaille. Yes, poor young man, he borrowed a gentleman's watch one day last June, and they hung him out to dry, one of the warmest days of the next July. A nice, gentlemanly fellow was Rosignol, he had the sweetest way of taking your handkerchief or pocket book you ever saw in your life.

Here the "hanging out to dry" refers to an execution by hanging, although the character who describes Rosignol's "accident" notes (with a hint of fidelity to the chosen metaphor) that the hanging took place on a warm day in July—conditions under which, humidity permitting, wet clothing might be expected to dry relatively quickly.

Frederic Hill was an American literary figure who evidently lived in Boston for much of his life.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography, volume 1 (1850) has a character use the expression as a taunt directed toward the narrator, a young man who has been knocked down an embankment and into a river by a careless horseman:

"For shame, Swindon! the man is hurt," said another rider, a very tall and handsome man, who pulled up his horse, and, letting the crowd pass, sprang off to my assistance.

"Leave him alone, Lord Lynedale," said one of the women; "let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him out to dry."

"Why do you bother yourself with such muffs?" &c. &c. &c.

Here, the suggestion is that the young man—and not just his clothing—should be hung out to dry after his dunking in the river.

To like effect, but published in New York, is a rhyme in Jacob Abbott, Wallace, A Franconia Story (1850):

It was a picture of an old woman with a basket filled with children instead of clothes, which she was hanging out on a line. Underneath was written, MRS. PHIDGETT, and beneath that there was this couplet:

Whenever she washed her children she hung them out to dry, / Because she thought, if she left them wet, they'd all catch cold and die.

All three of these instances of hanging involve either clothes with people inside them or (presumably) unclothed children, and only the first instance is truly figurative, as the others involve items that are actually wet.