One who does not pay; the holder of a free-ticket at a “show” or on a railroad. Hence to “dead-head” a person is to pass him along gratis.
1849. Mr. Root would inquire of the gentleman from N.Y. whether he took his passage and came on as what the agents sometimes call a “dead-head.”… He would inform him that the term “dead-head” was applied by the steamboat gentlemen to passengers who were allowed to travel without paying their fare.—House of Repr., Jan. 9: Cong. Globe, p. 203.
1854. On the Little-River Road … they do n’t allow no dead-heads.—Knick Mag., xliv. 96 (July).
1855. The windows were crowded on the outside with ‘dead-heads,’ who seemed not to mind the storm as long as they saw the fun.—Id., xlvi. 650 (Dec.).
1856. [The Indian said,] Me dead-head; Injun no pay; poco mas arriba!—Id., xlviii. 501 (Nov.).
1857. I soon discovered [at a pew-auction] … that no ‘dead-heads’ were allowed on this line, and that if a man could n’t pay, he was put off the train.—Id., xlix. 643 (June).
1857. Last Sunday, in a western village, when the plate was being passed in church, a gentleman said to the collector, “Go on,—I’m a deadhead,—I’ve got a pass.”—Harper’s Weekly, July 11.
1858. The conductor concluded that it was the intention of the trio to dead-head one party through.—Olympia (W.T.) Pioneer, Aug. 27.
1866. My daddy sold goods on credit about forty years ago, and when a customer run away, he used to codicil his name with “G. T. A.,” gone to Arkansas. What a power of dead heads must have roosted in them woods on the other side of Jordan!—C. H. Smith, ‘Bill Arp,’ p. 68.
1888. [Those letters] which had to do with the stage … went dead-head.—Portland (Me.) Transcript, March 14 (Farmer).
1903. [Edward Eggleston] objected, on principle, to all “dead-heading” of the clergy, and to all “discounts” made to preachers on the ground of their calling.—G. C. Eggleston, ‘The First of the Hoosiers,’ p. 263 (Phila.).
