Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a usurer; a pawnbroker; often as attrib.

1682		A Litany from Geneva n.p.: From the Cent per Cent Scriv’ner, and all his State-tricks [...] Libera nos.
1748		Smollett Roderick Random (1979) 49: Speak, you old cent. per cent. fornicator. – What desperate debt are you thinking of?
1760		Foote The Minor 28: He has recourse [...] to the cent. per cent. gentry, the usurers.
1768		Foote Devil Upon Two Sticks in Works (1799) II 252: He only suggested their cent, per cent, squeezings.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1786		Life of Fanny Davies 7: [She] was even at ten years of age able to outwit both Mr. Cent per Cent and the Balderdasher.
1792		New Cheats of London Exposed 63: The Park is likewise a resort for usurers, who ply their in quest of young spend-thrifts, with whom they deal in the cent. per cent. way .
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1826		T. Lane ‘There Never Was Such Times’ [satirical print] (pawnbroker’s shop name) Cent Per Cent. Money Lent.
1830		N. Ames Mariner’s Sketches 102: Selfish, sordid, cold-blooded, calculating, cent-per-cent Americans.
1832		Satirist (London) 2 Sept. 285/4: Said Rotchy [i.e the banker Rothschild], the other day, to a silent per shent friend on ’change.
1838		Paul Pry 30 Sept. 182/1: [S]upporting the respectability of one of the thousand families of the Abrahams, and practically improving the cent-per-cent tenets of the tribe.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 25 Mar. 3/3: Old German cent per cent [...] walking arm in arm with a Lord.
[1859		Wkly Varieties (Boston, MA) 3 Sept. 8/1: ‘Cent per cent!’ the thievish broker cries / As he steals the last from dead mean’s eyes!].
1862		Golden Age (Queenbeyan, NSW) 14 Aug. 3/3: ‘Extortioners!’ ‘Cent per cent!’.
1864		Chicago Tribune 3 Sept. 2/1: Belmont is the wheel with thr wheel, the great ‘shent per shent’ who runs the Democratic machine.
1867		J. Greenwood Unsentimental Journeys 74: The smug-faced ‘tally’ rascal, and his brother, the director of the cent.-per-cent. Loan Office.
1867		Sportsman 17 Oct. 2/1: Notes on News [...] [A] spendthrift, whom debt and ‘fifty per shent’ Jews incite to occupation of the paternal shoes.
1871		N.Y. Times 22 Dec. 4/4: Mr August Belmont — whom the Herald used to dognify with the title of the ‘shent per shent Chairman’.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Aug. 13/4: A quondam author (?) has invested in a ‘shixty per shent’ concern. He has his Melbourne prototype, however, in Mr Newton Goodrich who [...] now runs a pawnshop in [...] Collingwood.
1888		F.G. Philips Jack and Three Jills 241: They told me he was a cent, per center over in your gay metropolis.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Sept. 11/1: And yet rumour says the same learned Judge is under the thumb of half the shent-per-shenters in the city.
1892		in Punch 26 Nov. 252: If the Poor wos clean and sober, where ’ud be their cent-per-cents?
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Jan. 20/4: Now, the three-ball man and the money-lending Parsee have done their deadly work, and they have no farms to cultivate […]. Viceroy Curzon has introduced a bill into the Indian Council that is […] so sweeping in […] its destruction of the three-ball man that the whole tribe of shent-per-shenters is crying to the Empress to veto the bill and save their tribe from utter destruction.
1901		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 11 Sept. 3/2: Yes, I’ll have to borrow another score / From some cent.-per-centum Yid.
1907		Sun. Times (Perth) 12 May 1/1: Mr. Shent for-Shent likewise purchases from any casual Bill Sikes.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 July 10/1: He may yet forsake the pawnshop and the sign of monish lent, / And repent in cindered sackcloth for his sins of shent per shent.
1920		Bulletin (Sydney) 12 Feb. 3/2: Usurers, usurers all, / These folk [i.e. Jews] under the sky; / And their cent, per cent, will fall / Due and dry.
2005		(con. mid-19C) K.L. King Wedding Runaway 22: Or was it just that he hadn’t learned to cover his debts in the time-honored method of getting a loan from a cent-per-center?