How did the meaning transfer from decoy to informer? It seems likely that someone was a decoy for the police and would give the names, or as a decoy to bring people in. Here's the source, but I think it still means decoy here, and the informer was a bit later. The most likely explanation of the phrase's origin is that it was coined to describe those police informers who hung around bars (on stools no doubt) in order to pick up underworld gossip but that the name was influenced by the earlier, but as then unamed, hunting decoys. and avoided as a Police stool-pigeon and spy." "Everyone fears that his confederate may prove a traitor.
![stool pigeon stool pigeon](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/XBMAAOSwDH1gj089/s-l300.jpg)
The Sheboygan Mercury printed a piece in August 1851 about the prevailing political situation in Italy: What we do know is that the current meaning of informer came into being in the USA around the middle of the 19th century.
#Stool pigeon code
The infamous and now well known " stool pigeon" system, was discovered.Īcting as stool pigeon was included in the 1855 Revised Code of the District of Columbia as an offence against public policy.įinally, as for the police informer meaning, The Phrase Finder says: One 1846 New York assembly report on the establishment of the police mentions: Throughout the 1830s and 1840s we see a similar pattern with more uses applying to a human decoy to catch or trick others, often a less intelligent individual who didn't realise the scheme, manipulated by criminals, gangsters or politicians. The next stool-pigeon in 1825 is a human decoy to lure others to Presbyterianism an 1826 stool-pigeon seems to be a human decoy 1829 is the literal avian decoy 1829 is a lord "used by him as a stool-pigeon to betray the unwary". Indeed this popular preacher, having been countenanced and caressed by the Presbyterians, appears to have sold himself to them for a tool, or rather a stool-pigeon to decoy other Methodists into the snare designed to entrap them for the Presbyterian clergy.
#Stool pigeon free
That the black was dressed very decently that he sometimes said that he was free that Van Ort made use of him as a kind of stool-pigeon, to decoy or persuade other blacks to go to the south with him. The second use I found in Google Books is from a 1821 court report where it is used figuratively, but still as a decoy rather than informant:
![stool pigeon stool pigeon](https://mario.wiki.gallery/images/8/8a/StoolPigeon.jpg)
In this manner, the decoy or stool pigeon is made to flutter, and a flock of pigeons may be called in their flight from a great distance.
![stool pigeon stool pigeon](https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a7yz5Lq_460s.jpg)
I found an antedating earlier than 1830 for the avian decoy stool pigeon, in the 1812 History of Animals: Designed for the Instruction and Amusement of Persons of Both Sexes by famous lexicographer Noah Webster:
![stool pigeon stool pigeon](https://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/pigeon-shoes-japan-designboom-01.jpg)
Finally, after becoming a decoy for the police (1859), it became a straight informer (1868). This then became a human decoy to trick or deceive others (1821). The first meaning was a decoy bird (1812). A decoy bird, or a police informer, or criminal's look-out or decoy.