PHILISTINES,
Serjeants, Bailiffs and their Crew. Also Drunkards. I fell among the Philistines, I chopt upon a Knot of drunken Fellows.
Serjeants, Bailiffs and their Crew. Also Drunkards. I fell among the Philistines, I chopt upon a Knot of drunken Fellows.
Entry taken from 1736 Canting Dictionary, by Nathan Bailey.
Philistines in the 1811 Vulgar Tongue
Also see examples in Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes collected by John S. Farmer (1896).