Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a braggart, a boaster.

[1841		Bentley’s Misc. July 47: He introduced [...] ‘Three Tooley Street Tailors’ ‘By the deep nine,’ [...] and ‘You must not sham Abraham Newland,’ — all of which he sang to the same tune, ‘Jim Crow’].
1856		Illus. Berwick Jrnl 22 Nov. 4/1: The succeeding speaker [...] asked, ‘Who are you?’ [...] and emphatic answer was vouchsafed by one of the audience who cried out ‘A Tooley Street Tailor’.
1859		Kentish Chron. 17 Dec. 2/5: [of a group of Frenchmen deemed to have written impertinently to Queen Victoria] [headling] Tailors of the French Tooley Street.
[1862		London Standard 26 Sept. 3/1: A Fourth Tailor of Tooley Street [...] ‘I wish to find out by what authority Mr Taylor takes on himself to answer “for all England,” and who gave him this authority’].
[1872		Sportsman (London) ‘Notes on News’ 30 Mar. 4/1: Odgerites do not see this, and still persist in believing, with Tooley-street pertinacity, that the insignificant section oi community they represent means country at large] .
1873		Sl. Dict. 326: Tooley Street tailor a self-conceited, vainglorious man.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1891		Dundee Courier 5 Aug. 3/5: The chairman [...] spoke in the same way as the tooley Street tailor.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 87: Tooley Street Tailor, a self-inflated person, conceited, etc.
1905		Sporting Times 18 Mar. 2/5: Ever since there were tailors in Tooley Street, you can get that sort in any part of the country.
1910		World’s Work 16 94/1: Parish, pump politicians who manage affairs of national concern in the spirit of a Tooley Street tailor.

2. in attrib. use of sense 1.

1883		Shields Dly Gaz. 14 June 2/6: We spoke of English democracy, meaning the vast body of the people, and not the Tooley Street tailor bodies, who arrogate to themselves this title.
1899		Bristol Mercury 8 Sept. 2/6: It is this Tooley street tailor style of advocacy that brings about a contempt not only for the advocate, but for the cause as well.