Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) to cheat one’s accomplice or partner in crime.

1521		Skelton Speke Parott line 495: Suche statutes apon diettes, suche pylling and pollyng – So ys all thyng wrowghte wylfully withowte reson and skylle.
1560		Becon Early Works Parker Soc. (1843) 202: He should the simple and plain people [...] not to deceive them [or] to poll and pill them.
1576		Tyde taryeth no Man in Collier (1863) II 27: He teacheth them how to pill and to poule.
1576		G. Gascoigne Steele Glas Diii: The stately Lord [...] is noe come up to courte, And leaues the country for a common prey, To pilling, polling, brybing, and deceit .
1583		P. Stubbes Anatomie of Abuses 114: As though this pillage and pollage were not rapacious enough, they take in and inclose commons, moores, heaths. [...] Take heed, therefore, you riche men that pill and poll the poore.
1592		Greene Defence of Conny-Catching 38: He is a Caterpiller to others, and gets that by pilling and polling of the poore.
1616		W. Haughton English-Men For My Money D2: That graunde amico [...] Will poll you, I and pill you of your Wife.
1627		R. Perrot Jacob’s Vow 50: They were not so forward and liberall to maintaine them [...] as we are to pill and poll from them.
1669		R. L’Estrange Fables of Abstemius (1692) CCLIV 229: Let us for Argument sake, suppose Pilling and Polling Officers, as Busie upon the People as These Flies were upon the Fox.
1681		News from Doctor’s commons 5: [W]ho can patch up an old rotten foundation that [...] was but a Popish invention [...] , for a Bishop to vex and domineer, and pill and poll, and plague his Brethren, Clergy and Laity.
1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 883/2: from ca. 1835.