Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also apple and pears) stairs [apple and pears variant is mid-19C only].

1857		‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 141: APPLE AND PEARS, stairs.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1882		Breckenridge News (Cloveport, KY) 23 Aug. 3/3: We lived up ‘apples and pears’.
1884		Sporting Times 29 Nov. 1/1: He [...] dragged me down the apples and pears by my Barnet Fair, and put me on the Hannah Maria.
1892		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘The Rhyme of the Rusher’ Sporting Times 29 Oct. n.p.: The clock on the apples and pears / Gave the office for us to clear.
1909		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Daylight Saving’ Sporting Times 13 Mar. n.p.: He’d divested himself of his daisies below, / And had crawled up the apples and pears.
1913		C. Mackenzie Sinister Street II 1100: I soon shoved him down the Apples-and-pears.
1921		N&Q 12 Ser. IX 345: Apples-and-Pears. Stairs.
1927		Eve. Herald (Dublin) 24 Nov. 6/4: The East End tongue is rich in quaint idioms and rhymed slang. [...] The ‘apples and pairs’ [sic] are meant to indicate stairs.
1934		J. Franklyn This Gutter Life 159: Where ’e’s a-goin’ teh, they ’ave teh go dahn two flights er apples an’ pears.
1945		J. Maclaren-Ross Swag, the Spy and the Soldier in Lehmann Penguin New Writing No. 26 38: Sandy climbed the apples and pears to bed.
1946		St. Vincent Troubridge ‘Some Notes on Rhyming Argot’ in AS XXI:1 Feb. 47: peaches and pears. The stairs. (Origin uncertain, but probably English.) More probably American with its reference to peaches.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross ‘The Dark Diceman’ Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 202: Now Bogart climbs the apples to his apartment.
1953		J. Franklyn Cockney 293: A Cockney woman, unless on very friendly terms that admit of jocularity will not say she is going up the apples and pears.
1959		‘Screwsman’s Lament’ in Encounter n.d. in Norman Norman’s London (1969) 68: Drummer takes a butchers, and sees it ain’t alive / Then we whip it down the apples and cart it down the drive.
1960		G.W. Target Teachers (1962) 71: Wasn’t on the apples-and-pears, ain’t got there yet, so up you.
1960		(con. 1950-1960) R.A. Freeman Dict. Inmate Sl. (Walla Walla, WA) 3: Apples ’n pears – stairs.
1962		R. Cook Crust on its Uppers 60: Marchmare and I dived for the apples.
1978		T. Davies More Aus. Nicknames 22: No one these days climbs the apples and pears, they climb the apples.
1983		R. Aven-Bray Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 17: Apples and Pears Stairs.
1989		in G. Tremlett Little Legs 192: apples stairs (abb. for apples and pears in rhyming slang).
1999		Observer Travel 3 Oct. 3: Pearly royals gather on the apples and pears of the church.
2000		Guardian G2 17 Feb. 3: ’Ere ’e comes up the Apples and Pears.

2. (UK Und.) in fig. use, an appearance in court [the stairs here are those leading from the cells to the dock in an Old Bailey court].

1972

P. Fordham Inside the Und. 163: Muck up the family name with another apples and pears at the Old Bailey.