Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to defraud, to deceive, esp. by passing counterfeit money or substituting a worse article for a better one; thus change-ringer n., one who practises this form of fraud.

1811		Lex. Balatronicum n.p.: ring the changes When a person receives silver in change to shift some good shillings and put bad ones in their place. The person who gave the change is then requested to give good shillings for these bad ones.
1818		W. Perry London Guide 13: If you appear tolerably ‘soft,’ and will ‘stand it,’ he perhaps refuses these [coins] also, after having ‘rung the changes’ once more.
1828		Times 30 June 5/4: Endeavouring to defraud the shopman [...] out of the sum of 25s. by the following trick, which, in the slang dialect, is called ‘ringing the changes.’.
1832		Satirist (London) 11 Mar. 87/2: [of swapping two pairs of dice] At length [...] what is far more probable, he had rung the changes with the dice in his pocket; for he handed them over to the young nobleman, whose suspicions [...] were in no measure removed by this act.
1833		Morn. Post (London) 22 Oct. 3/1: A farmer, of Edgerton, Kent, was robbed 90l. in bank-notes, by means of the stale trick called ringing the changes.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 4 Feb. 3/3: The victim doubtless thought they were ‘ringing the changes upon him’.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 29 Aug. 2/5: On further scrutiny he found that someone else had rung the changes on him.
1856		Sun (London) 10 Apr. 4/7: Persons [...] could gain their five pounds a week regularly, by ‘ringing the changes’ (a mode of passing bad money).
1861		H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor IV 295/1: ‘Ringing the changes’ is effected in this way:– A person offers a good sovereign to a shopkeeper to be changed. The gold piece is chinked on the counter [...] and is proved to be good. The man hastily asks back and get the sovereign, and pretends that he has some silver, so that he does not require to change it. On feeling his pocket he finds that he does not have it, and returns a base piece of money [...] instead of the genuine gold piece.
1868		‘Six Years in the Prisons of England’ in Temple Bar Mag. Nov. 534: You change your mind after you have ‘rung’ your snyde half ‘quid’ with the good one.
1869		Illus. Police News 4 Dec. 2/3: Capture of Two of a Gang of Thieves — ‘Ringing the Changes’.
1870		Sportsman (London) 15 Feb. 2/1: In the first instance, they ‘un-sexed’ Nuage by converting him into mare, [...] and now they have rung the changes Cinna (which is female all the world over), and changed her from mare into horse!
1877		Five Years’ Penal Servitude 234: Nothing easier than for some man to have slipped out of bed, night or day, and rung the changes of the bottles.
1882		‘Thormanby’ Famous Racing Men 80: The Yarnold party [...] conspired to shift the stob a furlong nearer the winning-post. [...] The two men who rang the changes were, he believed, in custody.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 20 May 5/3: Yesterday two suburban shopkeepers were victimised by means of the trick known [...] as ‘ringing the changes’.
1899		Sketch (London) 22 Feb. 18: ‘No, we don’t “ring the changes” much (passing countefeit coins), it’s too risky’.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 12 Oct. 20/2: The old game of ‘ringing the changes’ is being revived in more than one big Australian city.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Nov. 13/4: Ballarat (Vic.) produced a new sort of change-ringer lately in the person of a petticoated innocent of 16. [...] She merely requested shopkeepers to change the sov., and, whenever she got a half-sov. among the change – as she mostly did – she would palm it and pass back a farthing, with the remark that it was a mean thing to try and rob a poor girl in that fashion.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 June 2nd sect. 12/7: If you do a bit of burgling in the night, / Or a bit of ringing changes in the day.
1910		L. Esson Woman Tamer in Ballades of Old Bohemia (1980) 73: chopsey: I ain’t been too good to you, I know. I want to make it up. [...] katie: It’s all over now. You can’t ring the changes on me.
1929		C.G. Gordon Crooks of the Und. 160: In short I had ‘rung the changes’ upon him when selling him a diamond ring worth thirty pounds for fifteen.
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 9: Ring the Changes: Obtain one pound for ten shillings by means of trick.
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 237: We aren’t really going to burn them. We’ll ring the changes, see, and burn some sacks of old paper.
1947		P. White The Ham Funeral in Four Plays (1965) 66: You’re a spellbinder, you are! You know how to ring the changes.
1965		L. Haylen Big Red 149: Young Roy mustn’t ring the changes.

2. in fig. use; to manipulate facts and figures.

1809		B.H. Malkin (trans.) Adventures of Gil Blas (1822) I 255: He rings the changes of my affairs; and tells me that I am spending principal and interest ... A beast!
1879		Sporting Times 22 Mar. 3/1: Betwixt you and me, I have rung the changes upon nearly every horse [...] in that illicit and ill-printed circular .

3. (UK Und.) to commit a crime, usu. theft, that depends on the criminal posing as some form of official or worker.

1818

W. Perry London Guide 107: A few go about who are false porters [...] who contrive to talk or toss up for gin, with real ones, and meanwhile ‘ring the changes’ by walking off with their loads.

4. to use deceptive language (in a non-criminal context).

1821–6

‘Bill Truck’ Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 284: This, and such like everyday stuff, was the eternal change they rung.

5. (UK prison) of a prisoner, to move surreptitiously from one companion to another in the exercise yard.

1877

Five Years’ Penal Servitude 180: He wanted particularly to have some conversation with me, and he, not I, ‘rung the change,’ or slipped away from the man he was with and came to me, while the man who was walking at my side went into the other’s place.

6. to adopt a series of variant disguises with the intention of confusing, thus ringer, one who practises this form of deception.

1914		Bulletin (Sydney) 13 Aug. 26/3: It was said of these brothers that they both fought a man once, one doing a couple of lively rounds and then excusing himself for a moment, and in that moment the changes were rung.
1928		M.C. Sharpe Chicago May (1929) 263: Then I rang the changes: Miss M. V. Churchill; Mrs. May V. ditto; M. Vivienne.
1978		A. Ayckbourn Joking Apart II i: Thought I’d ring the changes.