subs. (old).—1. A highwayman. Hence TO TRAVEL THE ROAD = to take to highway robbery.
1707. FARQUHAR, The Beaux Stratagem, iv. 2. 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.
2. (tramps’).—A tramp.
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, I. 251. There are many individuals in lodging-houses who are not regular patterers or professional vagrants, being rather, as they term themselves, ‘TRAVELERS’ (or tramps).
3. (old).—A transported felon, a convict: also a TRAVELLER AT HIS (or HER) MAJESTY’S EXPENSE.
4. (common).—A bonâ fide traveller: i.e., a person who, under the Licensing Act, is entitled to demand refreshment during prohibited hours.
5. (thieves’).—A thief who changes his quarry from town to town.
6. (Australian).—A SWAGMAN (q.v.). Hence TRAVELLER’S-HUT = quarters on a station set aside for swagmen, stockmen, and others not eligible for the squatter’s house.
1869. M. A. H. CLARKE, The Peripatetic Philosopher, 41. At the station where I worked for some time (as ‘knock-about-man’) three cooks were kept during the ‘wallaby’ season—one for the house, one for the men, and one for the TRAVELLERS. Moreover, ‘TRAVELLERS’ would not unfrequently spend the afternoon at one of the three hotels (which, with a church and a pound, constituted the adjoining township), and having ‘liqoured up’ extensively, swagger up to the station, and insist upon lodging and food—which they got. I have no desire to take away the character of these gentlemen TRAVELLERS, but I may mention as a strange coincidence, that, was the requested hospitality refused by any chance, a bush-fire invariably occurred somewhere on the run within twelve hours.
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.
1896. Australasian, 8 Aug., 249. 2. They never refuse to feed TRAVELLERS; they get a good tea and breakfast, and often ten to twenty are fed in a day. These TRAVELLERS lead an aimless life, wandering from station to station, hardly ever asking for and never hoping to get any work, and yet they expect the land-owners to support them.
TO TIP THE TRAVELLER, verb. phr. (common).—To humbug; to romance; to tell wonderful stories of adventure à la Munchausen: also TRAVELLER’S-TALE and TRAVELLER’S TALENT (GROSE).
1760–62. SMOLLETT, Sir Launcelot Greaves, vi. Aha! dost thou TIP me THE TRAVELLER, my boy?
