Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a tailor.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: staytape a taylor; from that article and its coadjutor buckram, which makes no small figure in the bills of those knights of the needle.
1793		Saunders’s News-Letter (Dublin) 15 July 2/3: Timothy Staytape, the Tailor.
1802		Hants. Chron. 18 Jan. 2/3: A gentleman [...] finding his tailor very troublesome in his dunning visits passed a wire from the rod of his machine to the knocker [...] he locked the door, and set his machine in motion. Stay-tape knocked, when he instantly received a violent shock of his door.
1809		Morn. Advertiser (London) 4 May 1/3: [A] gemmen of the stay-tape and buckram art.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1829		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 19 Dec. 4/2: Messrs Stay-tape and Buckram have [...] purchased a Bankrupt’s effects [etc].
1902		Reading Mercury 23 Aug. 3/2: A new way of dealing with ‘duns’ was that of a ‘Gentleman’ who contrived, when his tailor knocked at his door, to give ‘Stay-tape’ an elecric shock.

2. (US Und.) a clerk in a dry-goods store.

1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 81: Stay Tape, a dry goods clerk.