Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a beggar; when used of a corrupt policeman (cit. 1993), one who demands large bribes.

1832		Warder & Dublin Wkly Mail 18 Aug. 6/4: ‘Why, Mary, what trade is your husband?’ ‘He is no trade, ma’am, he is an asker [...] A genteel beggar, ma’am that dresses well and goes about to gentlemen’s houses’.
1836		Bell’s Wkly Messenger 20 Mar. 6/5: He had been a beggar all his life, or, as he termed it he was ‘an alms-asker’.
[1843		Southern Reporter (Cork) 5 Jan. 2/3: He did not become the asker of alms for a wealthy congregation to condemn ‘the ragged men and barefoot female beggary’.
1856		C. Reade It Is Never Too Late to Mend III 327: He [...] is now an ‘asker,’ i.e. he begs, receives alms].
1858		Jersey Indep. 15 Dec. 2/6: In some of the selecter circles of St Giles’s and Field-lame it was considered a breach of etiquette to call a gentleman who lived by public mendicancy a Beggar. An ‘asker’ was the polite apellation.
1861		(con. 15C) C. Reade Cloister and Hearth (1864) II 21: Wheeling an ‘asker’ in a barrow, is not that work?
1865		Marylebone Mercury (London) 28 Oct. 5/4: History tells us that these askers of alms, when caught, were punished with thirty stripes.
1877		Huddersfield Chron. 3 Feb. 3/1: Maid— ‘He’s an asker, ma’am.’ Mistress— ‘A what, Mary?’ Maid— ‘Oh, he asks, ma’am’.
1888		Sheffield Eve. Teleg. 28 Sept. 4/4: A respectable looking asker [...] humbly begged relief from him.
1891		Portsmouth Eve. News 3 Aug. 2/6: ‘Please, ’m, he’s an asker!’ [...] ‘Do you mean a beggar?’ ‘Well, ’m, some people do call it that; we call it “asker”.’.
1904		Hull Dly Mail 18 Jan. 1/7: Some people, too proud to be considered ‘beggars’, describe themselves as ‘askers’. A fine distinction!
1967		‘Whisper All Aussie Dict.’ in Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxv 6/1: good asker: One who snips in large amounts.
1983		R. Aven-Bray Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 17: Asker Demander of a large amount.
1993		Smith & Noble Neddy (1998) 198: How much he was going to charge my friend was worrying me: [the policeman] was a big asker. He was good at fixing blues, you got just what you paid for, but I thought he was going to charge him like a wounded bull.