Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a confidence trick carried out by a woman who poses as a deaf and dumb conjurer; a woman who practices such a confidence trick; thus go upon the toliban.

1781		G. Parker View of Society II 147: Tolliban Rig [...] has been exercised in some parts of England with amazing success. A genteel looking woman ties a bit of thread to the end of her tongue, which communicates to a bit of paste that she swallows and draws the tongue back, so as even to make the Faculty believe she was born without one. As soon as she is admitted into a house, she points to her tongue, then puts her fingers to her ears, which she persuades you something has grown over. Another motion is made to bring her a pen, ink, and paper, when she writes down, that ‘tho’ she has been deprived of her hearing and speech, yet it is sufficiently compensated by a fore-knowledge which the Almighty has given her; and as she can look into futurity, she begs leave to cast the figures of nativity who happen to attend to her.’ It is not surprising that inferior people should be deceived by these artifices, when very often sensible people give way to their contrivances.
1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 164: Tollibon Nan. Tollibon in cant means the tongue. Women who have an art of rolling the tongue up in such a manner, as to make even the faculty believe they were born without one. Going upon the tollibon is a woman of this sort.
a.1790		H.T. Potter New Dict. Cant (1795) n.p.: tolobon rig persons who go about the country telling fortunes by signs, pretending to be deaf and dumb.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		Flash Dict.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict. 33: Tolo bon rig – persons who go about the country telling fortunes by signs, pretending to be deaf and dumb.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open [as cit. 1835].
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 90: tolobon rig Fortune-tellers.