Green’s Dictionary of Slang

one who shirks their duties, a malingerer.

1916		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 12 Dec. 5/5: A successful lead-swinger is a clever individual [...] when there comes a sudden call for a difficult task, he cannot be found.
1918		Aussie (France) VIII Oct. 16/1: ‘I’ve got a cushy job, have I!’ snapped the Postal Orderly at the Battalion’s champion lead-swinger.
1919		W.H. Downing Digger Dialects 31: leadswinger [...] a malingerer.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 84: If I had stayed in the orderly-room much longer, I should have become a lead-swinger too.
1933		(con. WWI) F. Richards Old Soldiers Never Die (1964) 322: I have come to the conclusion that lead-swingers and dodgers get the best of it.
1940		Mail (Adelaide) 22 June 23/1: A malingerer is a ‘swinger’.
1942		J. MacLaren-Ross ‘I Had to Go Sick’ in Memoirs of the Forties (1984) 256: All you lads are alike. Bleeding lead swingers the lot of you.
1957		P. Archer Social Welfare and the Citizen 29: This procedure is a safeguard against the ‘lead-swinger’ with an over-indulgent doctor.
1962		J. Williams Mutiny 1917 141: [...] excitable Blaise, Mangematin the lead-swinger, big irrepressible Gervais, were now subdued.
1968		A. Burgess Enderby Outside in Complete Enderby (2002) 224: I’ll deal with you in a minute. I know you, leadswinger that you are.
1981		G. Wynne Man from Odessa 77: It was easy enough to make out that I was fed up with Army life, a natural lead-swinger.
1993		(con. 1918) P. Barker Eye in the Door 269: One of the degenerates, the loonies, the lead-swingers, the cowards.
2002		R.C. Lilley Dealing with Difficult People 86: And don’t expect the clinicians to do the manager’s job of getting a lead-swinger back to work.