scuffle hunter
noun1
Historical A type of porter or manual labourer formerly employed at a port.
- Those (who are distinguished by the nick-name of Scuffle-hunters) prowl about the wharfs […], under pretence of asking employment: but their chief object is to pillage and plunder whatever comes in their way.1796, Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis:
- Scuffle-hunters were also found as an addition to the thousand or so warehouse labourers storing and dispatching goods from the port to their destination.2012, Jerry White, London in the Eighteenth Century, Bodley Head, published 2017, page 221: