Green’s Dictionary of Slang

of objects, insalubrious; of individuals, characterized as immoral.

1827		W.T. Moncrieff Bashful Man II iii: Some of his racketty fellow-students.
1838		‘The Gentleman in Black’ in Bentley’s Misc. IV 610: None of your wild, harum-scarum, racketty fellows.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 25 Nov. 2/3: A very rackety looking blue jacket.
1850		Leics. Chron. 26 Oct. 4/1: ‘Ah, the old times was the racketty times!’.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 354/2: There’s no racketier place in the world than the Market. Houses open all night, and people going there after Vauxhall and them places.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 198: A rackety hare-brained young fellow, who [...] would stand no end of good dinners, with an ample allowance of drink to follow.
1877		H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (1st ser.) 52: [H]e was no rascal—only a racketty, mischief-loving ‘ne’er-do-weel’.
1882		Bristol Magpie 5 Oct. 13/1: A ‘racketty’ fellow, at Knowle, / Got ‘tight’ and fell into a hole.
1898		Pall Mall Gaz. 15 June 4/2: The rackety stockbroker father who haunts nightclubs, and his rackety son living riotously in the Quartier Latin.
1905		Marvel III:53 8: I bet he turned out rackety, sir.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 16 Sept. 1/1: She has consoled herself with a well-known racketty [sic] lawyer.
1914		E. Dyson Spats’ Fact’ry (1922) 90: Yer racketty. Yeh scatter it on ’orses or et two-up.
c.1921		T. Norman Penny Showman 1: I being the eldest of them all, and, I think, the most roving and rackety of them.
1929		J.B. Booth London Town 106: Rackety young fellow-about-town.
1931		B. Lubbock Bully Hayes 144: Here, waiter! Phiz! Pop! / I’m Racketty Jack; and no money I lack; / Oh! I’m the boy for a spree.
2016		V. McDermid Out of Bounds (2017) 209: Friends who had lived rackety dangerous lives, filled with booze [...] and drugs.