An agent or tout for a hotel, a boat, &c.
[1784. Men who, by getting in with the runners of the Bank, or by other means, find out who is pressed for the day, and extort the most enormous discounts.—Letter from “Loelius,” Maryland Journal, Dec. 14.]
[1800. A couple of runners attended a numerous meeting, and made their usual display of eloquence upon the occasion.—Mass. Mercury, June. 27: from the Dartmouth (N.H.) Gazette.]
1824. Our wholesale property-speculators and their gentry in livery, called runners.—The Microscope, Albany, Feb. 21.
1835. [At Oswego] a struggle began between the runners of the two boats.—C. R. Gilman, ‘Life on the Lakes,’ i. 31 (N.Y., 1836).
1840. Being now within the scope of the telegraph stations, our signals were run up at the fore, and in half an hour afterwards, the owner on ’change, or in his counting-room, knew that his ship was below; and the landlords, runners, and sharks in Ann Street learned that there was a rich prize for them down in the bay: a ship from round the Horn, with a crew to be paid off with two years’ wages.—R. H. Dana, Jr., ‘Two Years before the Mast,’ ch. xxxvi. p. 453. (N.E.D.)
1853. The Louisville papers come down pretty heavy upon the St. Louis runners, and St. Louis people in general…. A better and more peaceable set of men does not reside in this city, than our steamboat runners.—Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, March 24.
1853. Two ruffians last night assaulted a runner for the City hotel, and nearly killed him.—Id., June 20.
1857. We shall assume that the landlord’s jackals (or “runners”) have succeeded in inveigling a house-full of newly-arrived seamen into his den, there to be fleeced at pleasure.—T. B. Gunn, ‘New York Boarding-houses,’ p. 278.
1866. When we came alongside the last plank of the railway, the night being bleak and chilly, it was sweet to hear the cry of the hotel-runner (a tout is here called a runner), “Any one for Planter’s House?”—W. H. Dixon, ‘New America,’ ch. i.
