Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a thief, orig. one who uses a filch n.

1568		U. Fulwell Like Will to Like in Dodsley III (1874) 326: I promised of late to come unto a company, / Which at Hob Filcher’s for me do remain.
1573		T. Tusser Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1878) 25: Beware [...] Purloiners and filchers, that loueth to lurke.
1598		Jonson Every Man in his Humour IV ix: How now, signior Gull! Are you turned filcher of late? Come, deliver my cloak.
1612		Dekker O per se O L3: Filchers and Cloyers being all (in English) Stealers.
1636		W. Davenant Wits V ii: Th’ old blade Skulks there like a tame filcher, as he had Ne’er stol’n ’bove eggs from market-women.
1645		Recreation for Ingeious Head-peeces (3rd) Epitaph No. 138: Andrew Turncoat, who was neither Slave, Nor Soldier [...] Nor Fencer, Nor Cobler, Nor Filcher.
c.1661		A Beggar I’ll Be in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 26: A Craver my Father, a Maunder my Mother, / A Filer my Sister, a Filcher my Brother, [...] A Litter my Aunt, and a Beggar my self.
1664		T. Jordan ‘The Cheaters Cheated’ A Royal Arbor 35: Good morrow, fellow Filcher / What! do we sink or swim? / Thou look’st so like a pilcher.
1694		J. Eachard (trans.) Plautus’s Rudens II ii: Well met, Old Sea-Filchers, Oyster-Crackers, and Hook-Drivers.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy III 100: [as cit. c.1661].
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: filchers the Villains using such a Staff; the same with anglers.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1754		‘The Beggar’ Muses Delight 133: [as cit. c. 1661].
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1800		Caledonian Mercury 11 Jan. 3/2: A female filcher [...] enveloped in a long cloak [...] decamped with the booty.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1829		Australian (Sydney) 22 Dec. 4/2: The filcher immediately proceeded to Bloodsworth’s the butcher [...] and laying violent hands upon a quarter of lamb, was about carrying off the precious joint [etc.].
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford III 241: They want to do away with all distinctions in ranks, – to make a [...] gentleman highwayman class with a filcher of fogles.
1839		Bucks Herald 2 Feb. 4/2: 'A literary prig,' 'a filcher,' etc. and we are supposed to have copied the article in question, 'from a fellow feeling that is said to exist among theives'.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1849		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 1 Sept. n.p.: This worthy filcher of chickens has done a smart business.
1865		T. Archer Pauper, Thief and Convict 24: He becomes known to the police as a regular pickpocket and filcher.
1870		Southern Reporter 3 Feb. 3/4: The women who met in the New Cut were simple 'prigs' [...] filchers of lard and bacon.
1880		Hants. Advertiser 21 Feb. 6/5: Flesh Filcher - Henry Gamble, a lad, was charged with robbing his master [...] Mr Bennett, grocer and pork butcher.
1888		Reynolds's Newspaper 26 Aug. 4/6: Smaller rights were filched away one by one [...] the filchers were securely settled in their possession of their theft by the law of prescriptive right.
1892		H. Lawson ‘More Echoes from the Old Museum’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 181: And then ‘Senile de Salis’ rose — another hoary filcher.
1942		Sun. Post (Dundee) 4 Jan. 9/1: Rationing has brought out the food-dilcher, meanest thief of 'em all.