Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a highwayman.

[1706		Farquhar Recruiting Officer IV ii: There’s a great deal of address and good manners in robbing a lady; I am the most a gentleman that way that ever travelled the road].
1763		Gent.’s Mag. Sept. 461/2: Mrs. Jewel [...] was robbed [...] in the middle of the day by some Irish travellers .

2. one shilling [? it travels about from person to person or it enables one to travel].

1747

Life and Character of Moll King 11: Let me see, There’s a Grunter’s Gig, is a Si-Buxom; two Cat’s Heads, a Win; a Double Gage of Rum Slobber, is Thrums; and a Quartern of Max, is three Megs; – That makes a Traveller all but a Meg.

3. (chiefly Aus.) a tramp.

1846		South Australian (Adelaide) 15 May4/2: [from London press] Beggars tramp about from town to town; there is a new lodging house for travellers in every village; they tell people that they are travelling to find work.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 111: TRAVELLER, name given by one tramp to another.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 243/2: There are many individuals in lodging-houses who are not regular patterers or professional vagrants, being rather, as they term themselves, ‘travellers’ (or tramps).
1869		M. Clarke Peripatetic Philosopher 41: At the station where I worked [...] three cooks were kept during the ‘wallaby’ season – one for the men, one for the house, and one for the travellers. Moreover, travellers would not unfrequently spend the afternoon at one of the three hotels [...] and having ‘liquored up’ extensively, swagger up to the station, and insist upon lodging and food [...] [F&H].
1879		Queenslander (Brisbane) 19 July70/1 : Work is very slack just niow, and scores of travellers are n the tramp.
1882		Manchester Courier 28 Jan. 10/5: Martin’s services were in constant requisition as a writer of ‘stiffs,’ ‘kitesm’ or ‘lurking papers,’ as begging letters are variously termed by ‘travellers’.
1893		Sydney Morning Herald 12 Aug. 8/7: Throughout the Western pastoral area the strain of feeding the ‘travellers,’ which is the country euphemism for bush unemployed, has come to be felt as an unwarranted tax upon the industry, and as a mischievous stimulus to nomadism .
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Jun. 14/1: A pair of ‘travellers’ were lately hauled before a local Rhadamanthus charged with ‘languaging’ a squatter who refused them rations, and were ordered to quod.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 161: TRAVELLER: any passing bushman or swagman.
1932		Sydney Morn. Herald 22 June 17/4: The Menindle Unemployed Association has oprganized a ‘Travellers’ League’ embracing all men who tramp the roads in search of work.

4. (UK Und.) a thief who moves from town to town.

1839		H. Brandon Dict. of the Flash or Cant Lang. 166/1: Travellers – thieves who travel from place to place.
1846		South Australian (Adelaide) 15 May4/2: [from London press] If they suppose a man to be a raveller (travelling thief) they will come up to him and say [etc.].
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 9: Travellers - Thieves who travel from place to place.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 28: ‘Travellers’ are a class of automobile thieves consisting of hobos, travelling crooks, criminals fleeing from justice, or lawless persons who keep on the move because of wanderlust.

5. a sermon which can be delivered by the same preacher on different occasions and in different places.

1892

Pall Mall Gaz. 10 May 6/2: This sermon [...] was what is known amongst students as a ‘traveller’ .

6. (Aus.) alcohol that is bought in a public house for consumption elsewhere.

2006

Age (Melbourne) 6 Jan. 🌐 We finished off our rounds, bought some travellers to drink on the way home and headed back to the huts.