Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a shambling, useless, foolish person.

1933		Hecht & Fowler Great Magoo 31: Lay off that stumblebum if you wanna get somewhere. He’s just a lot of dog-meat.
1942		P. Wylie Generation of Vipers x: The allegedly glamorous stumble-bums who have provided us, these last thirty years, with what passes for our literature.
1955		B. Schulberg On the Waterfront (1964) 30: Why worry about a lot of washed-up stumblebums?
1964		P. Terson Night to Make the Angels Weep (1967) I ix: Oh, I’m not just any old stumble bum, I’m wanted in there.
1986		T. Winton That Eye, The Sky 140: Oh, come on, Stumblebum, wake up.
1996		H. Roth From Bondage 277: They’re not goin’ to spend the dough as long as they got a buncha stumblebums like us.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1975		L. Bangs in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 170: Lou Reed is the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock ’n’ roll to [...] murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity and suicide.
2005		L. Theroux Call of the Weird (2006) 35: He’s a stumblebum moron.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 354: ‘My days as a stumblebum welterweight’.

3. a third-rate boxer.

1930		D. Hammett ‘The First Thin Man’ in Nightmare Town (2001) 379: ‘Who’s the other [boxer]?’ ‘A stumble-bum named Terry Moore. If you go to fights much you’re sure to’ve seen him knocked out.’.
1941		J.K. Butler ‘Saint in Silver’ in Goulart (1967) 68: I looked like a one-round stumble-bum.
1943		T. Thursday ‘Romeo’s Juliet’ in Sports Fiction Fall 🌐 I am very tickled to hear the way you flattened that big stumblebum Horizontal Hawkins.
1981		G. Tate ‘Knee Deep in Blood Ulmer’ in Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1992) 18: When Blood goes vocal the bottom drops out like a stumblebum and the bridges take it to the hokey-pokey.
2011		‘Jack Tunney’ Split Decision [ebook] The punch drunk league with all the stumble bums out there taking licks for nothing more than cab fare.

4. a drunk, a homeless drifter.

1934		L. Berg Prison Nurse (1964) 83: We got a bunch of stumble bums and cheap grifters around here.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 317: Sweet dreams, all you flophouse grads [...] R.I.P., you stumblebums.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 12: The dive was almost empty [...] Only a couple of stumblebums sprawled out at a front table.
1966		R. Stone Hall of Mirrors (1987) 84: You don’t look like a stumblebum.
1979		F. Norman Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 115: No-homers and ragged stumble-bums.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 9: The Central detective squad was detached to round up vagrants: the chief wanted local stumblebums chilled.