Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to place on account; thus stick it up, to leave a bill unpaid; stick it up to, to charge to someone.

a.1790		H.T. Potter New Dict. Cant (1795) n.p.: stick it up to leave a reckoning unpaid, to run a score.
1821		W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry III iii: Verry vell, two pound, vith a pickled cowcumber, and a pen’orth o’ketchup, to make some gravy of; and stick it up to the bell! – d’ye hear?
1837		R. Nicholson Cockney Adventures 23 Dec. 58: Give me a quartern of gin [...] and stick it up to that ’ere rascally old brother er mine.
1849		Sam Sly 10 Mar. 1/2: Old Grogg says you must send the tin, / He von’t ‘stick up’.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 283/2: Suppose two foremen were to meet and have a drop of rum or brandy together [...] that’s charged to us poor fellows – it’s stuck up to us – but we mustn’t say nothing.
1864		B. Hemyng Eton School Days 162: Mind you don’t steal anything, as they will most likely stick it up to me.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 246: stick up, to place in an account; ‘stick it up to me,’ i.e., give me credit for it.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Jan. 7/2: Six months! O, Harry! ’tis too long, we swear! / How will the hungry ‘push’ thine absence bear? […] / Those gorging elves, Hal, who till you came near? / Would ‘stick up’ rum, ‘suspend’ colonial beer, / Content to hide ‘baths’ of their native ale; / Aught else to them was but a fairly tale.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Apr. 32/2: Only the Saturday night before, when he wanted to stick up a few drinks, the landlord had ordered him out.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 150: ‘To stick up a few beers or stores’ to get them on credit.
1938		N. Lindsay Age Of Consent 99: I stuck up some clothes at his tailor’s. Only three suits; came to a miserable twenty-one quid.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 199: stick up 1. To credit goods to your account, from mid C19 hotel habit of chalking drinks ordered on a slate you have to pay later.

2. (US) to give money to, to keep a mistress.

1830

Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) 26 June 1/2: He [...] is sticking up, in Broadway, to a certain fair lady.

3. (UK Und.) to leave a companion with an undue share of a tavern bill.

1873

Sl. Dict. 310: Stick up To leave a friend or acquaintance to pay the whole or an undue share of a tavern bill.