subs. (old).—1. A dupe; gull; a subject of plunder.—See BUBBLE.
1676. ETHEREGE, The Man of Mode, III., iii., in wks. (1704), 233. What spruce prig is that? A CARAVAN, lately come from Paris.
1688. SHADWELL, The Squire of Alsatia. [In list of cant words prefixed to.] CARAVAN: a bubble, the cheated.
1889. G. L. APPERSON, in Gentleman’s Magazine (‘Seventeenth Century Colloquialisms’), p. 598. Towards the end of the century a person easily gulled, or ‘bubbled’ was known as a ‘CARAVAN,’ but earlier the term ‘rook,’ which is now restricted to a cheat or sharper, appears to have been applied to the person cheated.
2. (old).—A large sum of money.
c. 1696. B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew. CARAVAN: a good round sum of money about a man, and him that is cheated of it.
3. (pugilistic).—A railway train, especially a train expressly chartered to convey people to a prize fight. [Early in the present century CARAVAN, now shortened to ‘van,’ was applied to a third class covered railway carriage; now a pleasure party is so described; also a gypsy’s cart; also the wheeled cages of a travelling menagerie.]
