Hard-up, subs. (common).—1. A collector of cigar ends, a topper-hunter.
[Which refuse, untwisted and chopped up, is sold to the very poor.]
Sometimes Hard-cut. Fr., un mégottier.
1851–61. H. Mayhew, Lond. Lab. and Lond. Poor, i., p. 5. The
cigar-end finders, or hard-ups, as they are called, who collect the
refuse pieces of smoked cigars from the gutters, and having dried
them, sell them as tobacco to the very poor.
1888. Tit Bits, 24 March, 373. Smoking hard-up is picking up the
stumps of cigars thrown away in the streets, cutting them up, and
smoking them in the pipe.
1891. Morning Advertiser, 26 Mar. A constable on duty on the
Embankment early in the morning saw the accused prowling about, and
on asking what he was doing, received the reply that he was looking
for hard cut.—Mr. Vaughan: Looking for what?—The Prisoner:
Hard-cut; dropped cigar-ends.