Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pensioner (at the petticoat) n.

a pimp.

1699		N. Ward London Spy VII 166: These, some of them, are Pensioners to the Pettitcoat, some Boretto-Men at the Groom-Porters; and some Flatterers and Smoothers.
1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 257: pensioner a mean-spirited fellow who lives with a woman of the town, and suffers her to maintain him in idleness in the character of her fancy-man.
1829		Vidocq Memoirs (trans. W. McGinn) III 118: She offered to lead me to the pensioner’s chamber, but I knew the way as well as she did.
1834		‘The Pensioner’ in Flash Minstrel! in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) I 99: And when she gets the money, / She brings it home with glee — / Oh, of all the merry lives, I sya, / A pensioner’s for me.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 74: PENSIONER, a man of the lowest morals who lives off the miserable earnings of prostitutes.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. [as cit. 1859].
1873		Sl. Dict.
1887		A. Barrère Argot and Sl. 272: Prostitute’s bully, or pensioner.