hide binders (high binders)

[George Thompson]

HDAS says of "high binder" (noun, 1a) "in pl. app. orig. the name of a criminal gang, . . .  but the reason for its choice is unknown"  Its first citation is from 1806, taken from the Dictionary of Americanisms.

Here is a passage from 1807 that perhaps opens a explanation for the origin of the word:
It was testified on the trial that Pitt and Noah belonged to the association of Hide Binders.  Public Advertiser, January 24, 1807, p. 2, col. 5

Nicholas Pitt and William Noah, and a half dozen others, were tried for inciting a riot on December 25, 1806, by attacking a Catholic church or the worshippers leaving it.  Perhaps "Hide Binder" is the correct form and indicates that that these louts all worked at a trade that involved hides.  There were tanneries in NYC in these years; or perhaps they were butchers.  Butchers had a reputation in NYC in the early 19th century for thuggishness -- I dare say the journeymen and apprentice butchers who worked on the killing floors, rather than the brokers who bought the cows and sold the beef.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.