piemen

[Mullins, Bill]

The OED definition for "pieman" is merely one who sells pies -- not a
derogatory term in and of itself.  However, piemen apparently ran with a
bad crowd, and are guilty by association:

The Gaming-Table, by William A. Seaver, Harper's new monthly magazine.
Volume 41, Issue 241, June 1870 p. 131 col 2.
"Towards night, when ravenous beasts usually seek their prey, there come
in shoals of hectors, trepanners, gilts, pads, biters, prigs, divers,
lifters, mill kens, piemen, decoys, shop-lifters, foilers, bulkers,
droppers, gamblers, donnakers, cross-biters, etc. (a goodly vocabulary),
under the general appellation of 'rooks;' and in this particular it
serves as a nursery for Tyburn, for every year some of this gang march
thither."


Title: "Drifting about"; or, What "Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville,"
saw-and-did. An autobiography by Stephen C. Massett.
Publication date: 1863. Carleton, NY p. 238
"Men, women, and children, cabmen, merchants, longwharf Jew slopsellers,
piemen, candymen, tailors, barbers, actors, priests, circus riders,
water carriers, omnibus drivers, editors, saloon proprietors, Frenchmen,
Germans, Italians, Greeks and Swiss, "fancy women," -- pushed, shoved,
crowded, jammed, raved, and stormed -- bumping up against one another,
the perspiration rolling down their faces in streams."