Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a swindler, specializing in passing counterfeit notes.

1872		G.P. Burnham Memoirs of the US Secret Service 347: He ventured to collar Wightman, knowing him, of old, to be grand Sachem among these ‘boodlers’ or confidence men.
1887		Wichita Eagle (KS) 5 July 2/4: The boodler is generally a pretty smart sort of fellow, as it takes a smart man to be a successful rascal.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1898		F. Norris Moran of the Lady Letty 227: Over $100,000. We’re rich— rich as boodlers, you and I.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 1 July 4/7: Mr. Norton would move for a Royal Comission to inquire into the political and pecuniary purity of Mr. Holman, the member for Cootamundra, one of the most incorrigible boodlers in the House.
1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 49: The great ‘caught with the goods’ scene, in which Tobaco surprises a pair of boodlers, who have been paid to be surprised.
1914		Day Book (Chicago) 14 July 1/2: The convicted boodler is pleading that the board of prison directors [...] liberate him.
1945		Police Jrnl 234: these incubators of infamy in which we have been breeding the boy bandit, the baby burglar, the youthful embezzler, boodler, gunman, gangster, blackmailer [etc.].
1957		Argus (Melbourne) 2 Jan. 6/6: The boodlers of the Stock Exchange and the VCR.

2. (also boodle) a corrupt politician.

1887		Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) 6 May 4/8: [headline] Chicago Boodler Trials.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 29 Apr. 4/2: The Freetrade Boodlers are still condemned to flit about the frozen shades of Opposition.
1896		Ade Artie (1963) 63: He turned out to be a boodler, eh?
1904		Wash. Times (DC) 11 Dec. 1/5: Milwaukee Boodler Gets Year in Prison. Former Alderman William Murphy had been convicted of soliciting and accepting a bribe.
1905		H. Lawson ‘The Individualist’ in Roderick (1967–9 II) 330: ’Tis the cant of the Calico Jimmy, of the Fatman with front as of brass, / Of the parson, the boodler and lawyer, and the hopelessly dull middle class.
1906		N.Z. Truth 21 July 1/8: And what a row the boodlers made.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 2/6: While the scare lasted the boodlers thought they might as well make as much of it as they could.
1926		L.C. Wimberly ‘American Political Cant’ in AS II:3 135: Their words, such as ‘boodler,’ ‘buncombe,’ ‘junketing’.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.