1890. Hume Nisbet, Bail Up! p. 92. I’m real grit and no gammon.
2. (thieves’).—A confederate whose duty is to engage the attention of a victim during robbery; a bonnet (q.v.) or cover (q.v.).
Verb (colloquial).—1. To humbug: to deceive; to take in with fibs; to kid (q.v.).
1700. Step to the Bath, quoted in Ashton’s Soc. Life in Reign of Queen Anne, v. ii., p. 111. We went to the Groom Porter’s … there was Palming, Hodging, Loaded Dice, Levant, and gammoning, with all the Speed imaginable.
1823. Moncrieff, Tom and Jerry, ii., 6. Vile I can get fifteen bob a day by gammoning a maim, the devil may vork for me.
1825. Buckstone, The Bear Hunters, ii. There! that’s just the way she gammons me at home.
1836. M. Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log, ch. ii. Why, my lad, we shall see to-morrow morning; but you gammons so bad about the rhino that we must prove you a bit; so Kate, my dear,—to the pretty girl who had let me in.
1836. Dickens, Pickwick, ch. xiii. So then they pours him out a glass o’ wine, and gammons him about his driving, and gets him into a reg’lar good humour.
1837. Barham, Ingoldsby Legends, ‘Misadventures at Margate.’ And ’cause he gammons so the flats, ve calls him Veeping Bill!
1840. Hood, Tale of a Trumpet. Lord Bacon couldn’t have gammoned her better.