Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the act of swindling or defrauding; also occas. as adj.

1606		Dekker Seven Deadly Sinnes 75: Then haue you the Shauing of Fatherlesse children, and thats done by Executors. The Shauing of poore Clients especially by the Atturneyes.
1609		Dekker Gul’s Horne-Booke 36: By this meanes you shall get experience by beeing guilty to their abominable shauing.
1815		T. Whittell ‘Valiant Edward Steel’ Poetical Works 138: A sort of shaving roysters did breed a strange debate, / But valiant Edward Steel [...] Did bang these boobies and these loobies, / Until he made them reel.
1829		N.-Y. Eve. Post 13 Aug. 2/6: [headline] Attempt at Shaving.
1841		C.E. Lester Glory and Shame Eng. I 38: I have been very much astonished to find the system of petty shaving so extensively carried on in England. I had supposed that, in this respect, America was pre-eminent .
1864		G.A. Sala in Temple Bar Dec. 40: He is as dextrous as a Regent Street counter-jumper in the questionable art of ‘shaving the ladies’ [F&H].

2. (US) discounting bills or promissory notes at a very high rate of interest; occas. attrib.

1816		Niles’ Register X 334/2: It ought to come, to relieve the people from the harpies that prey upon their labor in the ‘shaving’ of notes [DA].
1818		H.B. Fearon Sketches of America 13: He replied that the only business which was good for anything [...] in New York was shaving, meaning the buying and selling of bank-notes.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 354: ‘Dixon,’ continued he, looking at the name over the door—‘aye, I remember to have seen his advertisements in the papers, and have no doubt I may be suited here to a shaving’.
1838		N.Y. Advertiser and Express 21 Mar. 3/1: The Star says shaving is at present quite a monopoly [DA].
1848		in N.E. Eliason Tarheel Talk (1956) 293: [He] has been engaged in note shaving [...] He sees others making 20 p c [...] by a single operation in Shaving . . . What! is shaving notes at 20 p c or 25 p c discount not usury?
1849		G.G. Foster N.Y. in Slices 81: By and by he begins to expand his ideas and his operations – adds note-shaving and bill-broking in a small way.
1862		North Amer. Rev. July 113: This Wall-Street note-shaving life is a new field, a very peculiar field [F&H].
1883		Era (London) 7July 16/1: Money-brokers’ offices in America are called, in the slang of the day, ‘shaving shops’.