Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a tobacco pipe.

1811		Lex. Balatronicum n.p.: steamer. A pipe. A swell steamer; a long pipe, such as is used by gentlemen to smoke.
1819		P. Egan Key to the Picture of the Fancy going to a Fight 7: The amateurs are now seen in high glee enjoying their ‘steamers’.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 41: Quit the prize ring, put down thy steamer, and for awhile dispense with thy daffy.
1826		C.M. Westmacott Eng. Spy II 390: I hope you have left your dabs, and nobs, all right: perhaps prime legs is queer in the oration-box from a too frequent use of the steamer last darkey.
1833		H. Smith Gale Middleton 1 155: We ain’t got no steamers to smoke.
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 3 Sept. n.p.: Every cove [...] puffs a ‘steamer’.
1845		Bolton Chron. 7 June 4/2: [of NZ] Every article of trading had its slang term [...] Thus pigs and potatoes were respectively represented by ‘grunters’ and ‘spuds,’ guns, powder, blankets, pipes, and tobacco, by shooting-sticks, dust, spreaders, steamers, and weed.
1862		E. de la Bédollière Londres et les Anglais 318/1: steamer, une pipe.
1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890).
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 81: Steamer, a tobacco pipe.

2. (UK Und.) a cigar.

1904

Salt Lake Herald (UT) 19 Oct. 5/1: He’s weeding [the pocketbook] when he sees a grab all across the street leaning on a mush with a steamer in his face.

3. (W.I.) a form of hookah or water-pipe used for smoking marijuana.

1958

cited in Cassidy & LePage Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980).

4. a cigarette.

1997

Share Slanguage.

5. a piece of excrement [semantically linked to turd n., with its root in SE torn, the image is of a piece of excrement which, in the cold, might steam with body heat].

2001		N. Griffiths Sheepshagger 97: All these cars and buses goin past, yer’s fuckin Ianto curlin one out. Kex down, squattin over a great big red steamer.
2013		E. Hagelstein ‘Neighbor’s Dog’ in ThugLit Aug. [ebook] [T]he other one [i.e. a dog] ambled up and started gobbling on the steamer before it barely settled down in the dewy grass.
2016		N. Cummins Adventures of the Honey Badger [ebook] I was on it like a blowfly on a steamer.