Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a four-wheeled cab; thus its driver; also attrib.

1863		Bucks Herald 24 Oct. 4/6: He calls a Hansom a ‘shofle,’ and his own vehicle is known as a ‘growler’.
1873		Sl. Dict. 183: Growler a four-wheeled cab. It is generally supposed that drivers of these vehicles take a less favourable view of life than do their Hansom brethren.
1882		G.A. Sala in Living London (1883) May 150: A great deal more might be said in disparagement of the ‘growler,’ which is only the old hackney-coach writ small.
1890		Sporting Times 1 Feb. 3/2: I resolved to cross Africa in a GROWLER!
1893		Harper’s Mag. 87 July 307/2: In London, for example, the four-wheel cab is called a growler; — why?
1894		Lancs. Eve. Post 17 May 2/6: The driver of a four-wheeler is a ‘growler’.
1900		Punch 31 Jan. 81/2: I want to leave the van and go / Home comfortably in a growler.
1903		Illus. Sporting & Dramatic News 21 Nov. 10/3: The steed which has become to slow for a ‘sho’ful,’ as the hansom is termed [...] has to come down to ‘growler’ work.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 20 Apr. 3/6: A Charing Cross busman, having bumped his horses into the back of a ‘growler,’ [...] shouted out to tbe driver [etc].
1912		E. Pugh City Of The World 273: You might make nearly half as much at it [...] as you would if you went in for being a clerk or driving one o’ them there has-been growlers.
1912		Truth (Sydney) 29 Dec. 9/3: I could never drive a Growler / (Which goes on 4 wheels, you see).
1961		(con. 1920s) J. Sparks Burglar to the Nobility 28: A motor-car [...] going quite fast through the hansom cabs and growlers and bicycles.

2. (US und.) one who robs passengers in cabs.

1895

Mirror of Life 17 Aug. 14/4: [H]e sunk so low that only a few days ago he was one of a gang of growler workers who were arrested in Hoboken.