slang. [Origin unascertained: cf. TAT sb.5, v.3] A dust-heap picker’s name for a bone; whence by extension, anything worth picking from a refuse-heap or elsewhere. Hence Totter, a rag-and-bone collector; Totting, dust-heap picking.
1873. Slang Dict., s.v., ‘Tot’ is a bone, but chiffoniers and cinder-hunters generally are called Tot-pickers nowadays. Totting also has its votaries on the banks of the Thames, where all kinds of flotsam and jetsam, from coals to carrion, are known as tots.
1880. Law Rep., 5 Q. B. D. 369. The contents of the dust-bins consisted chiefly of cinders and ashes and the sweepings of the houses, but they also contained a number of articles thrown into them as refuse by the occupiers of the houses, and known as ‘tots.’
1891. Daily News, 11 March, 3/3. Costermongers, wood-cutters, and ‘totters,’ men who lounged about areas in the hope of getting old bottles and things from servants.
1910. Lond. City Mission Mag., May, 85/2. The Totters. Up betimes, these queer people set out by the dozen, with sack or barrow, in quest of rags and bones, rubber, and bottles, scrap iron and cast-off clothing. Ibid. When all else fails, and one can stoop so low, a day’s totting is bound to yield the cost of a night’s lodging.
