Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a mediocrity, a failure.

1929		J. Lait Broadway Melody 27: The Mahoney Sisters, small-timers, were treading toward the threshold of Fate.
1931		C.B. Yorke ‘Mob Murder’ in Gangland Stories Mar. 🌐 I’m not a small timer any more. I’m a big shot now.
1940		W.R. Burnett High Sierra in Four Novels (1984) 374: Petty Garrison. Small-timer, he was.
1959		F. Norman Fings II i: Small timers, ’asbeens? Oh, yer reckon Meatface is at the back of it.
1968		J. Barlow Burden of Proof 7: It had been a question of protection from tearaways for Maltese and Greek small-timers who’d sold purple hearts to kids.
1972		G.V. Higgins Friends of Eddie Coyle 87: Coyle’s a small-timer.
1980		M. Thelwell Harder They Come 182: Despite the gibes and sneers of [...] small-timers without vision.
1989		C. Hiaasen Skin Tight 258: Don’t be such a small-timer, remember what we’ve got here.
2004		A. Mansbach ‘Crown Heist’ in Brooklyn Noir 125: All the small-timers who copped off him knew that Laz was tight with the old Jamaicans.