Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) a cheat or impostor; a fraudulent fortune-teller.

c.1621		Middleton Women Beware Women IV i: He’s a factor!
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Faytors, c. the Second (old) Rank of the Canting Crew.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: faytors, or fators The Second old Rank of the Canting Crew: A kind of Gypsies, pretending to tell People their Fate or Destiny, or what they were born to. Now obsolete; but reckon’d the Twenty-seventh Order of Canters.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. 1725].
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Faytors, or Fators, fortune tellers.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.