hard up vs poor as a church mouse

hard up

adj

  • Lacking money; impecunious; in financial difficulties. 

  • Desperate. 

  • Lacking anything. 

poor as a church mouse

adj

  • Very poor, to the point of starving or begging; utterly destitute. 

How often have the words hard up and poor as a church mouse occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )