Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a pair of scissors.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 178: No slour’d hoxter my snipes could stay.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1874		Derbyshire Courier 12 Dec. 7/1: Local Flash language [...] A pair of snipes, a pair of scissors.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 77: Snipes, a pair of scissors.