Green’s Dictionary of Slang

leaden pill n.

a bullet.

1803		Balance 1 Mar. 65: Whipping one another through the lungs with swords, or mutually injecting leaden pills.
1832		Freeman’s Jrnl 25 Jan. 3/2: The possesion of which he kindly availed himself [...] by treating the proprietors to a marine execution, a leaden pill, or a hemp blister.
1846		Elgin Courant 24 July 4/2: He [...] continued throwing the ball cartridges to the compan, telling the boys ‘to send every mother’s son of the Charlists a leaden pill’.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 2 Oct. 1/2: And if in looking out for greed / we nap a leaden pill, boys, / We all must die once.
1855		Morn. Post (London) 2 June 3/6: Taking a cool and deliberate aim [he] lodged a leaden pill in the carcase of the ‘monarch of the forest".
1865		Glasgow Herald 17 June 3/7: This huge compound gangrene which is eating into the very vitals of this once great and proud city, and until it be removed by the [...] ‘powder’ and ‘leaden pill’ of Dottore Guiseppe Garibaldi [...] there can be no health for the body politic.
1874		Hastings & St Leonard Obs. 6 June 5/3: Fairman was called weith his double barrel gun [...] But our worthy Boniface at once detected that the doggie was not mad, but hungry, and imnstead of a leaden pill he prescribed a bone and some water.
1881		Glasgow Herald 6 June 7/5: Give him a leaden pill.
1891		Western Times 13 Oct. 3/6: A savage collie rushed at Mills [...] but G.P. [...] sent his canine enemy away with a leaden pill in his fore-leg.
1898		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 22 Dec. 6/3: We don’t want to fight and kill, / Or prescribe a leaden pill.
1904		Portsmouth Eve. News 8 Oct. 2/5: Owing to a sudden illness or demise, brought about by a small leaden pill.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.