> This letter was immediately given by the bankrupt to the defendant, with directions that as the voyage was altered, he, the defendant, would do the needful.
The opinion then spends several additional pages trying to determine what precisely was legally "needful" in this situation.
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Law_Journal_Reports...
Likewise. I have AdBlock turned up to 11 but all I saw on that page was a couple of lines of trivialities between Grammarly ads and filler.
Regrettably it does not appear in "World Wide Words" which did look into global English phrases during its run. https://www.worldwidewords.org/genindex.htm
As descriptivist as linguistics is, there is a real distinction between standard and non-standard language.