Green’s Dictionary of Slang

equal shares; usu. as halvers! I demand half!

1705		Vanbrugh Confederacy II i: Cods-fish, strike him, Madam, and let my Lady go your halves. There’s no Sin in plundering a Husband.
1753		Thief-Catcher 27: Another of them who is the Associate (but pretends to be a Stranger) cries Halves, meaning that every man Man has a Right to have a share.
1828		Edinbury Gleaner 12: If that were dune the sum final, Wad be just downright havers [sic].
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries & Miseries of NY 26: ‘Let me lend you a couple of hundred, and go you halves in your luck, be it good or bad’.
1865		Dickens Our Mutual Friend (1994) 497: Such price as stateable in a single expressive word, and that word was ‘Halves!’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Oct. 14/4: Smith found a penny lately upon the floor of a carriage when about to leave it. Brown, his friend, claimed ‘halves’ at once as the unwritten law of such findings. It was all done to ‘sell’ the stationmaster, who was standing handy.
1906		J.W. Carr ‘Words from Northwest Arkansas’ in DN III:ii 139: halvers, n. pl. Halves. ‘How’d you like to go halvers with me?’.
1932		L.W. Merryweather ‘Argot of an Orphans’ Home’ in AS VII:6 401: Hey, you! Halvers on your candy.
1946		Dundee Courier 19 Dec. 2/5: Pratt and carnie were going ‘halvers’.
1953		J. Thompson Criminal (1993) 75: Halvers on what you got from Kossmeyer.
1960		C. Himes Big Gold Dream 27: I know it’s halvers, man. If I find it, you’ll get your half, all right.