Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK campus) a vulgar, worthless person.

1780

1800185019001950

1967

1780		‘Roger Wittol’ An Incredible Bore 14: [an Oxonian speaker] But how did I shrug when I heard the Raff say, / He was going to a friend’s just near Ratcliffe Highway.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: raffs an appellation given by the gownsmen of the university of Oxford to the inhabitants of that place.
1799		‘Diary of a Sporting Oxonian’ in Sporting Mag. Nov. XV 86/1: Went down into St. Thomas’s and fought a raff.
1803		‘A Pembrochian’ Gradus ad Cantabrigiam 111: raff (probably contracted from Rag-a-muffin;) a dirty, low, vulgar fellow. One whose vices are not the vices of a gentleman.
1812		W. Combe Doctor Syntax, Picturesque (1868) 71/2: Myself and this great Peer, / Of these rude raffs, became the jeer.
1825		C.M. Westmacott Eng. Spy I 160: None of the town raff are ever admitted.
1838		Dickens Oliver Twist (1966) 442: Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class [...] brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river.
1843		R.S. Surtees Handley Cross (1854) 143: All the idle, dog-stealing raffs in the country — flash, slangey-looking scamps.
1848		Thackeray Vanity Fair III 252: There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of English raffs.
1850		Thackeray Pendennis II 195: A crowd of shabby raffs were stamping and hallooing.
1873		Sl. Dict. 266: Raff a dirty, dissipated fellow.
1883		Bristol Magpie 22 Feb. 11/2: Bon gre, mal gre, I’ll play and quaff, / In sweet communion with the raff .
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 64: Raff, a slovenly, dirty fellow.
1967		in S. Harris Hellhole 64: The prostitutes and addicts are [...] as they are in the world outside, the raff and chaff nobody cares about.