Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to trick, to hoax, to deceive, thus pigeoner, a swindler.

1675		C. Cotton Scoffer Scoff’d (1765) 2: Of Lies, and Fables, which did Pigeon The Rabble into false Religion.
1720		Observer No. 27 n.p.: He’s pigeon’d and undone [F&H].
1790		M.P. Andrews Better Late than Never 30: While he is pigeon’d it’s better I should be out of the way.
1796		T. Morton Way to Get Married in Inchbold (1808) XXV 8: Then, like a flat, I must get pigeon’d at faro.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1818		N.-Y. Eve. Post 12 Feb. 2/2–3: To such a pitch has this vice [playing policy] arrived that the place of drawing the lottery, the Union Hotel, is surrounded every morning by hundreds of servants and poor people, black and white, some of whom have horses ready and as soon as the first drawn number is called out, they jump upon the saddle and ride off at full speed to some distant office, and get the number insured, which they call pigeoning.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 319: ‘Is there no possibility of obtaining fair play?’ inquired Bob, ‘or redress for being pigeon’d?’.
1826		N.-Y. National Advocate 16 Jan. 2/2: I was apprehensive that a ‘mountebank’ might allude to a person who was in the habit of spending his days in the cock-pit, and his nights at the piggery drinking gin, and being pigeoned at whist.
1838		R.S. Surtees Jorrocks Jaunts (1874) 223: The English jockeys and lads, though ready enough to pigeon a countryman themselves, have no notion of assisting a foreigner to do so.
1841		Dickens Old Curiosity Shop (1999) 225: He never took a dice-box in his hand, or held a card, but he was plucked, pigeoned, and cleaned out completely.
1842		Flash (NY) 3 July n.p.: W‘ell, you d—d black rascal, you pigeoned me last night, eh?’ [...] He not only sells policies but he is conected with a class called ‘Pigeoners’.
1850		F.E. Smedley Frank Fairlegh (1878) 228: He contrives to have cash at command, and, instead of being pigeoned, has now taken to pigeoning others.
1855		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Jan. 9/1: [A] disreputable horse-dealing Lieutenant, who used to pigeon and bully soft griffins.
1865		R.S. Surtees Facey Romford’s Hounds 26: So long as the betting lists lasted, and he could pigeon the greenhorns, he was all very well.
1884		(con. 1730) A. Griffiths Chronicles of Newgate 209: Great ladies [...] made their drawing-rooms into gambling places, into which young men of means were enticed and despoiled. This was called ‘pidgeoning’.
1885		A. Griffiths Fast and Loose III 9: He could not but be aware that cards had been introduced after supper. The pigeoning had commenced.