Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to go out on a party, to take it easy; ext. to any form of spree, i.e. serial robberies; thus spreer n., one who goes on a spree; spreeing n., going on a spree.

1834		Ely’s Hawk and Buzzard (N.Y.) 21 June 3/1: He will oblige the one fined, by telling who it was complained, if he does not, of course, I shall believe that he done it himself, and kept the money to spree upon.
1842		‘The Swell Coves Alphabet’ in Nobby Songster 29: W. stands for Waterford, of spreeing he’s the king.
1856		H.B. Stowe Dred I 241: ‘Tom it does very well for a young man to have a spree once in one or two months. [...] But,’ says I, ‘Tom, to spree all the time won’t do.’.
1860		Yale Literary Mag. XXV 308: Another great shame connected with our social life is that of spreeing or ‘bumming’ [DA].
1876		Sheffield Indep. 23 Dec. 15/1: Such a spell of spreeing[...] had seldom been seen.
1879		‘’Arry on the River’ in Punch 9 Aug. 57/1: ’Ow on earth can yer spree without shindy?
1888		World (N.Y.) 15 Apr. 6/1: Various stories have gone out that Tom Ramsey is bent on ‘spreeing’ worse than ever this season. These are exaggerations, but Kelly undoubtedly has his hands full to keep the ‘great and only’ in form.
1895		J.L. Williams Princeton Stories 11: This is my room and, dash it all, I loaned it to the dash freshmen spreers and not to the whole dash college.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 145: A Guinea Pig spreeing for days at a time on Carbonic Acid Gas became listless, inattentive and of practically no value to Society.
1959		P. Marshall Brown Girl, Brownstones (1960) 31: Yes, they gon be spreeing tonight.
2000		J. Ellroy ‘Grave Doubt’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 103: Graham stayed mobile. His spree turf stretched wide. [...] He spreed for seven days.

2. to treat someone else to a party.

1902

Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Sept. 25/1: She forgave him his sins over and over again, till at length he visited and spreed all the people in the Boxhill seat [...] but omitted to pay a husbandly call on his waiting wife.