Green’s Dictionary of Slang

diddler n.²

a cheat, a confidence trickster; also attrib.

1803		J. Kenney Raising the Wind I i: waiter: Oh. it’s Mr. Diddler trying to joke himself into credit at the bar. But it won’t do, they know him too well. [...] Sam, mind you never trust that fellow. [...] sam: Never you fear that, mun. I wasn’t born two hundred miles north of Lunnun, to be done by Mr. Diddler.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 91: His penetrating liberal rib, with looks as prepossessing as clouds before a thunderstorm [...] fetches the ‘Diddler’ a plate.
1824		R.B. Peake Life of an Actor II i: Poor! Coming Jeremy Diddler over me – Here’s a sovereign.
1832		Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) Sept. 1 n.p.: To conclude with a new piece called raising the wind, or two jeremy diddlers.
1833		Spirit of the Times (NY) 12 Jan. 2/2: [T]hey may be pounced upon [...] by some fashionable Jeremy Didler [sic].
1834		‘Jack Downing’ Andrew Jackson 131: I wonder if it wont some day or other bring these holy diddlers up tu the ring, and demand a settlement of old scores.
1837		R. Nicholson Cockney Adventures 2 Dec. 35: A ‘Jerry my Diddler’ tenpence.
1840		Lytton Money IV ii: blount: He borrowed seven hundred pounds of me! glossmore: And six hundred of me! sir john: And five hundred of me! stout: Oh! A regular Jeremy Diddler!
1841		Flash (NY) 26 Sept. n.p.: He appears, and is a mere Jeremy Diddler.
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 12 Nov. n.p.: The ingenious manoeuvres of a whole family of Diddlers .
1843		R.S. Surtees Handley Cross (1854) 302: Mr Diddler [...] who by dint of stealing back as fast as he supplies, manages to carry on a very extensive business with a very small stock.
1850		‘Ned Buntline’ G’hals of N.Y. 140: He was in the act of being very handsomely taken in and done for by one of the most accomplished of modern Jeremy Diddlers.
1859		G.A. Sala Gaslight and Daylight 3: Spunge again, that stern Jeremy Diddler, who always bullies you when you relieve him, and whose request for the loan of half a crown is more like a threat than a petition.
1861		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 12 Oct. 4/1: [headline] A Naval Jeremy Diddler. Mr William B. Churchill [...] has lately been astonishing the public by the ease with which he can spend money whoch he hasn’t got.
1867		J. Greenwood Unsentimental Journeys 101: Certain folks whose only aim was, like Jeremy Diddler, to hoodwink the worshippers and fleece them of their money.
1873		Sportsman (London) ‘Notes on News’ 7 June 4/1: A fact which will set the noble army of Diddlers in England all agog [...] ‘during his stay in Berlin the Shah has received about one hundred begging letters daily’.
1873		Wkly Times (Melbourne) 2 Aug. 9/5: Every Jeremy Diddler, who has deserted his creditors in these parts, conveniently forgotten the history of his insolvencies.
1875		‘Aliph Cheem’ Lays of Ind (1905) 76: For vulgar dodges, and diddlers male, / Rudge had a bosom of brass.
1877		J. Greenwood Dick Temple III 32: A mean, manoeuvring rascal [...] whose unwholesome gains depend entirely on his ability as a Jeremy Diddler.
1889		Clarkson & Richardson Police! 8: The dupe was first ‘spotted’ by a Jeremy Diddler personage, or ‘taker up’.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 30 Sept. 4/3: Many a Jeremy-Diddler, recognising that he can make a pound or two first and take the risk of a week or two in goal afterwards, wilfully accepts the odds.
1894		Mirror of Life 11 Aug.14/2: Every kind of Jeremy Diddler dodge was resorted to by him to raise the wind.
1895		St James’s Gazette 15 June 13: Your deeply obliged, jeremy-diddler [F&H].
1901		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 8 May 2/7: He is far from being an illiterate man, such as this Jeremy Diddler of a journalist would [...] suppose him to be.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 15 June 4/3: [headline] The Doctor and the Diddler.
1908		D. Blackburn Leaven 29: No, sir, your missionary civilisation means the production of a race of nigger Pecksniffs and Jeremy Diddlers.
1909		N.Z. Truth 29 May 4/8: One Alfred Antonovitch, of Auckland. This despicable Dago dodger and diddler is not a full-fleuged bookie, by any means.
1917		‘Henry Handel Richardson’ Aus. Felix (1971) 101: They were comparing him, he knew, with the poor old Jeremy Diddler yonder, to the latter’s disadvantage.
1921		Mencken letter 15 Dec. in Riggio Dreiser-Mencken Letters II (1986) 422: Diddler!
1959		I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 84: Each year there are some half million new schoolchildren who will be amazed by the diddler who can bite half an inch off a poker (he bites half an inch away from the poker).
1963		L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 107: A ‘gipper’, a ‘fiddler’, a ‘diddler’, a ‘kitsler’, or a ‘kinsler’, a ‘chiseller’, or an’amuser’ is a swindler.

In compounds

diddler (machine) (n.)

(UK Und.) a gambling fruit machine.

1934		J. Franklyn This Gutter Life 234: Diddler machines were [...] innocuous enough to look at, just big, shining metal boxes with a lever at the side and a little square window in front. Lulu dropped a penny in the slot, pulled the lever – then click! the machine was in motion – [...] the three wheels came to rest, each showing the picture of a piece of fruit.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross Of Love And Hunger 152: I won some money on the diddler.