Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) in business, a supposedly honest ‘front’ for a dubious, if not actually criminal transaction; also used of a dishonest strategem (see cite 1812).

1806		Eve. Post (NY) 15 Sept. 2/4: Behold the ludicrous farce of making a stool pigeon of the ‘beastly’ representative of a petty Barbary power, for the purpose of decoying Congress [etc].
1812		Eve. Post (NY) 12 Feb. 2/4: The project of a British treaty [...] has been set up as a stool pigeon [...] and it has been seriously taken into consideration!
1825		Long Island Star (Brooklyn, NY) 15 Sept. 2/4: What can be more deceptive and fraudulent, that to procure several persons, of know good judgment [...] and get them to play off the hypocrite, and (as by-bidders or stool pigeons, to pretend to buy when they do not!).
1830		Middlebury Free Press (VT) 22 Apr. 2/1: May the knave bind honest men to act as stool pigeons for his game?
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 8 Jan. n.p.: The procuress, pimp and stool-pidgeons still honor the worthy Clerk with their confidence.
1853		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 8 Oct. n.p.: The best supply of Stool Pigeons, and making them last long enough to pay well [etc].
1861		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 5 Oct. 6/2: George Parks, the stool pigeon and pimp.
1870		Sun (NY) 29 Apr. 2/2: Gould bought the controlling interest in the Tribune, and put the stock in the name of his stool pigeon, taking care [...] to have it hypothecated to him for the money he advanced to buy it.

2. (US) one who lures victims into a crooked gambling game, brothel or similar.

1816		Carlisle Wkly Herald (PA) 2 May 1/2: He acts as procuror, or stool pigeon, to a Faro bank [...] and divides the spoil with four other sharpers of the black leg tribe.
1833		Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) Sept. 21 n.p.: [N]or shall we meddle ourselves with sporting gentlemen, black legs or their stool pigeons .
1842		Flash (NY) 2 Oct. n.p.: Nance Kemp [...] is well trained [as] a stool pigeon. She may be seen most any night [...] seeking her prey and enticing the unwary from the path he is treading.
1870		Eve. Teleg. (Phila., PA) 1 Feb. 5/1: These games have their cappers and stool-pigeons constantly [...] ready to pick up anyone verdant enough to allow them to get into conversation with them.
1883		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 1 Dec. 3/3: There is a little knot of fellows [...] who make a regular business of ‘roping in suckers.’ They use a battered old hulk of a soubretta as a stool pigeon. When she is painted and fixed up [...] she would pass for 25.
1897		Eldridge & Watts Our Rival, the Rascal 369: When her son was old enough to serve as an apprentice in her confidence games, she employed him as a ‘stool-pigeon’ .

3. an informer, one who makes a confession implicating others.

1833		N.-Y. Daily Advertiser 5 Dec. 1/7: J. Edwards, a sort of stool pigeon as he is called by the department [and] Brightly [stole and pawned the coat]. Turning traitor to his accomplice, [Edwards] informed against him sufficiently to have him arrested, hoping to escape himself on account of his assistance in arresting other rogues.
1842		‘The Rubber; or Mat’s Last Game’ in J. Littell Clay Minstrel (1844) 350: Ritchie, to gull the populace, fluttered like a stool-pigeon!
1850		N.Y. Dly Herald 18 Jan. 2/2: It is no uncommon thing for the ‘stool-pigeon’ to accompany the rogies in the commission of the crime, and when the oficers make the arrests, who are previously notifed by the ‘stool-pigeon’, the latter worthy is allowed to escape.
1868		J.D. McCabe Secrets of the Great City 360: He will say, ‘This is a sneak-thief;’ ‘This is a pickpocket;’ ‘This man has just been released from the State prison;’ ‘This one is a gambler, stool-pigeon,’ etc., etc.
1889		Chicago Trib. 7 Jan. 6/4: The men who ‘turn up’ the stolen property [...] are the ‘stool-pigeons’ [...] whose relations with the police department are both intimate and confidential.
1895		E.W. Townsend Daughter of the Tenements 225: Some of the thieves were also stool pigeons, sneak agents of headquarters’ detectives.
1909		I.L. Nascher Wretches of Povertyville 62: Stool-pigeons are ex-convicts who continue their associations with the criminal classes and sell whatever information they can pick up to the police.
1917		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 25 Sept. [synd. col.] He was a mine of information for the police, for it was at his [...] tables that the stool pigeons, who furnish information to the police, collected.
1917		A. Conan Doyle His Last Bow in Baring-Gould (1968) II 798: ‘Do you dare to suggest that I have given away my own agents!’ ‘I don’t stand for that, Mister, but there’s a stool pigeon or a cross somewhere, and it’s up to you to find out where it is.’.
1921		P. & T. Casey Gay-cat 193: The govamint is makin’ up a list o’ all the stool-pigeons in the Wobbly ranks.
1931		Eve. News (Rockhampton, Qld) 27 May 3/1: Other curious names in everyday use' among criminals [are] ‘squeaker,’ or ‘stool-pigeon’ (an informer), ‘jacks’ (detectives), and ‘dogs’ (police shadowers, who dog the heels of suspects).
1933		‘Goat’ Laven Rough Stuff 146: If you cried or talked, even about yourself, you would be classed as a stoolpigeon by the rest of the gangsters and thieves.
1944		D. Runyon Runyon à la Carte 113: Some of them figure I am a stool pigeon for the officers.
1950		S.J. Baker in Sun. Herald (Sydney) 8 June 9/4: Other American expressions [...] recorded among our criminals include: [...] ‘stool pigeon,’ ‘scram,’ and ‘take for a ride’.
1957		Laurents & Sondheim West Side Story I i: Didn’t nobody tell ya there’s a difference between bein’ a stool pigeon and cooperatin’ with the law?
1965		R.L. Pike Mute Witness (1997) 79: Important information is what stool-pigeons collect and sell.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 25: Stool pigeons fly in both directions.
1999		E. Bunker Mr Blue 54: The stigma of cowardice and being a stool pigeon, which is how my peers would see it, would haunt me forever.
2004		J. Ellroy ‘Jungletown Jihad’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 373: I’m an American. I understand my civic duty as a stool pigeon.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 157: ‘You are my personal snitch, rat, stool pigeon, and squealer’.

4. attrib. use of sense 3.

1851		‘Greenhorn’ [G. Thompson] Bristol Bill 58/2: What stool-pigeon arrangement was being concocted here?
1872		G.P. Burnham Memoirs of the US Secret Service 141: He was urged to this infernal job by Felker himself, who supplied him freely with money, and promised ‘stool-pigeon’ testimony to clear him of complicity.
1930		M. Fiaschetti You Gotta Be Rough 63: [S]tool pigeons are not always underworld characters [...] It takes all kinds of feathered beauties to make a stool-pigeon system.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 37: The minute some of these stool-pigeon niggas know somethin’ [...] they go tell the man about it.
1977		E. Torres Q&A 113: ‘I don’t want to team up with no stool pigeon faggot’.
1985		N. Pileggi Wiseguy (2001) 126: One of the rat stool pigeon hacks had showed her Linda’s name on my visitors’ list.

5. (US Und.) an ‘inside man’ who takes a job to gain information about the proposed site of a robbery.

1926

O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 1 Apr. [synd. col.] As a rule a ‘stool pigeon’ manages to find a job in the counting room of a plant to be robbed [...] The ‘stool pigeon’ usually vanishes when the job is done.

6. in fig. use, any person or thing that shows another person up; also attrib.

1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 83: I wish this stool-pigeon moon wasn’t so bright tonight.
1954		N.Y. Herald Trib. 28 Feb. 46/3: A bright kid who knows all the answers and makes his classmates look bad is a ‘stool pigeon’ and the school principal is the ‘warden’.

7. a time-and-motion overseer.

1936

(con. 1920s) Dos Passos Big Money in USA (1966) 774: Less waste, more spotters, strawbosses, stoolpigeons (fifteen minutes for lunch, three minutes to go to the toilet).