Thieves’ slang. [app. altered (? through toba’, toba) from tobar, the word for ‘road’ in Shelta, the cant or secret language of the Irish tinkers: see Note below.] The toby: the highway as the resort of robbers; ‘the road’; also transf. highway robbery (called also the toby concern, toby lay); hence to ply or ride the toby, to practise highway robbery; the high (or main) toby, highway robbery by a mounted thief; also, the highway itself; the low toby, robbery by footpads.
1811. Lex. Balatr., Toby Lay, the highway.
1812. J. H. Vaux, Flash Dict., s.v., The toby applies exclusively to robbing on horseback; the practice of footpad robbery being properly called the spice, though it is common to distinguish the former by the title of high-toby, and the latter of low-toby.
1824. Scott, St. Ronan’s, xxxi. Armed, as if he meant to bing folks on the low toby.
1904. Athenæum, 4 May, 648/1. Travellers … looked askance at its long, empty reaches, haunted maybe by gentlemen of the high toby.
[1890. J. Sampson, in Jrnl. Gypsy Lore Soc., II. 217. Tober or Toby. This old word has found acceptance in every branch of cant…. Toba, ground, is given as strolling players’ cant in the ‘Sporting Chronicle.’ Borrow in his ‘Lavo-Lil’ calls Tobbar ‘a Rapparee word.’]
Hence Toby v., trans. to rob on the highway; Tobyman, a highwayman.
So toby-gill, high toby gloak, high toby spice (also high spice toby): see quots.
1811. Lex. Balatr., s.v. Toby, High toby man, a highwayman. Low toby man, a footpad.
c. 1812. in Byron, Juan, XI. xix., note. On the high toby-spice flash the muzzle, In spite of each gallows old scout.
1812. J. H. Vaux, Flash Dict., s.v., To toby a man, is to rob him on the highway, a person convicted of this offence, is said to be done for a toby. Ibid., Toby-gill or Toby-man, properly signifies a highwayman. Ibid., High-toby-gloak, a highwayman.
1834. H. Ainsworth, Rookwood, III. v. Jack Hall, a celebrated toby-man.
1876. Hindley, Adv. Cheap Jack, 4. Halting … during the heat on the ‘high spice toby,’ as we used to call the main road.
1881. Daily News, 22 Dec., 1/3. When the footpad and ‘high-tobymen’ of ancient turnpike roads are replaced by male and female brigands armed with pistol and chloroform.
1902. Illustr. Lond. News, 20 Dec., 951/3. I am a-looking anxiously for a tobyman that has wickedly robbed a lady.
[Note. For Shelta see J. Sampson, in Jrnl. Gypsy Lore Soc., 1890, II. 217, also Kuno Meyer, ibid. 257. The latter holds Shelta or ‘Sheldhru’ to be ‘a deliberate and systematic modification of Irish Gaelic, of considerable antiquity, the words being altered by reversal, metathesis, substitution and addition of letters or elements. Hence tobar has been viewed as formed by metathesis from Irish bothar ‘road’; though, if so, it must either have been formed from the written word, or be very ancient, since medial th has long been mute.]
