Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a piece of black crepe worn around the hat of a mourner or undertaker.

1840		T. Haliburton Clockmaker III 207: If you have a mind for a rich young widder, clap a crape weeper on your hat, and a white nose-rag in your hand.
1862		Thackeray Adventures of Philip (1899) 114: It is a funereal street, Old Parr Street [...] the carriages there ought to have feathers on the roof, and the butlers who open the doors should wear weepers.
1874		J. Greenwood Wilds of London (1881) 128: The master undertaker with one black kid glove off and his ‘weeper’ trailing down his back.
1902		Eve. Teleg. 30 Aug. 3/3: [They] dressed it [i.e. a corpse] in the suit of old clothes, with hat and weepers.

2. usu. in pl.; a long, sweeping moustache, long sidewhiskers.

1909		(ref. to 1884) in J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.
1911		G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 183: A shred of a man, bundled up in a great fur coat, his thin neck wrapped in a silk-knitted muffler, and affecting those whiskers which have all the semblance of virtue and which are popularly known as ‘weepers.’.
1919		E. Dyson ‘The Single-Handed Team’ in ‘Hello, Soldier!’ 100: Ned lost one ear, the left, ’n’ struth, / He dropped the correspondin’ weeper.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 200: The tunbellies, most of them justices of the peace sprouting vieux jeu dundrearies, what were called weepers.