Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to put the blame for something on someone else, to ‘pass the buck’.

1900

Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Oct. 10/4: [The yarn] has been told ov every swell pickpocket who ever existed. George Price had it fathered at him; [...] ‘Pendragon,’ of London Referee, has dished it up several times; and this scribe seems to remember it as an episode in the career of Thackery’s Chevalier Balibari.