Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a pickpocket technique whereby a victim is lifted bodily and held upside down so that any valuables fall out of his pockets, to be seized by the criminals .

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Hoisting. A Custom among pick pockets of setting a Man on his head that his money, watch, &c. may fall out of his pocket, which they hold not to be Robbery.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: Hoisting among pickpockets, is, setting a man on his head, that his money, watch, &c. may fall out of his pockets; these they then pick up, and hold to be no robbery.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 36: Hoisting, put standing on one’s head; thieves turn a man on his head so that his valuable may fall from him.

2. shoplifting; note attrib. use in cit. 1956.

1812		Vaux Memoirs in McLachlan (1964) 82: Lest the reader should be unprovided with a cant dictionary, I shall briefly explain in succession: viz., hoisting [...] Shop-lifting.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1867		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 12 Oct. n.p.: Sophia’s mother is now in the Tombs, on the charge of ‘hoisting’.
1868		‘Six Years in the Prisons of England’ in Temple Bar Mag. Nov. 534: She can secrete articles about her dress when in a shop looking at things, and that’s one way of ‘hoisting.’ Jewellers’ shops are the best places for that game.
1869		J. Greenwood Seven Curses of London 88: Shop-lifting – hoisting.
1870		(con. 1800s) Leeds Times 7 May6/6: These youths practised [...] thirteen different ‘lays’ including [...] ‘hoisting,’ or shop-lifting.
1930		(con. 1910s) D. Mackenzie Hell’s Kitchen 43: Women, in main, either go in for picking pockets or for ‘hoisting’.
1936		J. Curtis Gilt Kid 39: What did you get done for? Hoisting?
1941		V. Davis Phenomena in Crime 197: ‘Hoisting’ is explored on an organized scale.
1956		‘Charles Raven’ Und. Nights 20: Hoisters [...] whose turnover is limited to how much gear they can stow inside their hoisting bloomers.
1974		G.F. Newman You Flash Bastard 160: Everyone had either had, or was having, something off [...] possibly they cheated the taxman, or stuck a gun over a bank counter, or did a little hoisting from Woolworths.
1988		J. Healy Grass Arena (1990) 92: Fuck this, I’m going up the town to do a bit of hoisting.
1998		J. Hoskison Inside 21: Hoisting and possession of class A drugs.