Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a blind man, both actually and in the game of Blind Man’s Buff.

1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn).
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Gropers Blind-men.
1707		J. Shirley Triumph of Wit.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1754		Scoundrel’s Dict. 15: Blind Men – Gropers.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Gropers, blindmen, also midwives.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890).
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 33: Gropers, blind men.

2. a midwife.

1785, 1788, 1796, 1811, 1823

see sense 1.

3. a pocket [one gropes in it for money].

1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 133: What, no copper clinking among you, my hearties? What, have you got red-hot heaters in your gropers, that you’re afraid to thrust your daddles in them?
1801		G. Hangar Life, Adventures and Opinions II 61: Those necessary professional accomplishments, such as [...] how to frisk his gropers for his reader and screens.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1821		Flash Dict.
c.1830		‘Smith’s Frolic’ in Holloway & Black II (1979) 61: For down in my groper her morley I got.
1852		Launceston Examiner (Tas.) 24 Dec. 862/1: [W]e should from his volubility have inferred that he had followed the calling of ‘public patterers,’ who affect to be ministers, and preach in the open air to collect crowds for the benefit of those whose ‘mawleys’ dip deep into the ‘cly’ and ‘gropers’.

4. in pl., the hands.

c.1800

‘Drunk in the Night’ No. 26 Papers of Francis Place (1819) n.p.: The gallus young huzzey while I felt her tuzzy, was down with her gropers to maul my wipe.

5. (US drugs) a deep inhalation of cannabis from a pipe [it tends to be followed by a coughing fit as one’s lungs grope for air].

2001

Da Smokehouse Marijuana Gloss. 🌐 groper [us] – a massive bong hit, followed by much coughing as your lungs grope for air.