Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the very best, the ultimate, the epitome.

1702		S.P[arker] Tully’s Five Books De Finibus 228: A Wise Man is at the Tip-top of all Felicity.
1753		Richardson Sir Charles Grandison (1812) VI 535: You profess ignorance; but in heart imagine you are at the tip-top of your wisdom.
1766		H. Brooke Fool of Quality II 258: At this Rate we shall have Lady Homespun at the very tip Top of the Mode.
c.1775		H. Carey Honest Yorkshire-Man 11: My Neice loves everything to the tip Top of the Mode.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1807		Irving & Paulding Salmagundi (1860) 164: The Giblets were determined that nothing should stop them in their career, until they had run their full course, and arrived at the very tip top of style.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry I viii: jerry: This indeed is a splendid view of Life in London. tom: It is; the tip-top!
1830		Mr Mathews’ Comic Annual 15: The tip top o’ de morning to you, my jewel.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor II 135/1: I think I was one of the tip-tops of the trade at one time.
1877		J. Greenwood Dick Temple I 182: I might have [...] been at the tip-top of the ‘fancy.’.

2. an upper-class sophisticated person, a person from high society; also a collective n. for the cream of society.

1753		School of Man [trans.] 125: To figure among high Company, was what he had long been aiming at; this his marriage has done at once, and among the Tip Top .
1800		G. Colman Yngr Heir at Law III ii: He was one of your tip-tops, too [...] he carried a gold stick before George the First.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London II 99: There is no necessity to buz about with court flies, to waste time and money in getting introduced to the tip tops of the West, to join what are termed the fashionable circles, and to end a fashionable career by a whereas or a whitewashing.
1828		‘A Flat Enlightened’ Life in the West II 32: [A] great number of persons were made to believe that Wack’em was being backed heavy by the tip-tops.
1850		Thackeray Pendennis II 207: Poor Lady Clavering herself avowed that she was obliged to take what she called ‘the canal’ into her parlour, because the tip-tops wouldn’t come.
1859		E. Eden Semi-Detached House (1979) 44: Ah, the Duchess of St. Maur. Quite one of your tip-tops.
1878		‘’Arry on Pooty Women’ in Punch 21 Sept. in P. Marks (2006) 149: The tip-tops are losing their stiffness; the grand highty-tighty don’t pay.
1898		R. Dottie Rambles & Recollections x: From tip-top, swell [...] down to the decidedly plebeian.