Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a highwayman.

1728		Defoe Street Robberies Considered 34: Snafflers, Highwaymen.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: snaffler A highwayman.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1788].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1859		‘Scene in a London Flash-Panny’ Matsell Vocabulum 99: Ogle the cove, Bell—he wants to pass for a snafler in his belcher tye, though he never bid higher than a wipe in an upper benjamin.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 82: snafflers Highwaymen.
1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890).
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 199/2: Snaffler. A highwayman, as distinguished from holdup men who rob stores, apartments, banks, and the like.

2. a street robber.

1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 77: Snafflers, thieves.
1950		Tit-Bits 1 July n.p.: An army of 20,000,000 delinquents – embracing pilferers and petty thieves, spare-time ‘snafflers’ and ‘fireside fences’.

3. a mean or miserly person.

1906

A.H. Lewis Confessions of a Detective 203: I’d have fenced it as it was; but, say! that old snaffler of a Jew wanted to cut it in two with me.