A tosher is someone who Waste picker in the Storm drain, a sewer-hunter, especially in London during the Victorian era. The word tosher was also used to describe the thieves who stripped valuable copper from the hulls of ships moored along the Thames. The related slang term "tosh" referred to valuables thus collected. Both "tosher" and "tosh" are of unknown origin.1851, H. Mayhew, London Labour, vol. II, p 150/2: "The sewer-hunters were formerly, and indeed are still, called by the name of ‘Toshers’, the articles which they pick up in the course of their wanderings along shore being known among themselves by the general term ‘tosh’, a word more particularly applied by them to anything made of copper."
A tosher in Victorian London is the profession of the title character in Dodger, a 2012 novel by Terry Pratchett.Doubleday.
The protagonist of Nick Harkaway’s 2012 novel Angelmaker describes the London sewers and backstreets as “Tosher’s Beat”.
The character Murky John is a Tosher in Year of the Rabbit Series 1 Episode 2.
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