The Gambler's Cop seems likely to have been the first form of bottom palm described in print. Gianfranco Preverino points out a passage in L'Antidote ou le Contrepoison des Chevaliers d'Industrie, 1768. In the twenty-third “letter” we find this: “Other bolder ones mark all the Aces by making a very small fold in the top of their left side, and when they give the first play to their opponent, while shuffling the cards, they find the three Aces and put them at the end of the deck; and when they give the cards to their opponent to cut, with their left hand they skillfully withdraw the three Aces that are in the end of the deck, and give the cards with their right hand to be cut, keeping their left hand in front of their chest, so that their opponent can’t, see anything; after he has cut, they gather together the cards with their right hand and put them on the three Aces that are hidden in their left hand, and then deal the cards”. (English translation by Lori Pieper; see Gibecière, Vol. 7 No. 2, Summer 2012, p. 156.) The absence of detail in the action of the palm, and the mention of “keeping their left hand in front of their chest, so that their opponent can't see anything”, more suggests a Gambler's Cop than it does a full palm from the bottom of the deck, although a full palm cannot be ruled out.

Robert-Houdin wrote (and illustrated) the first clear description of the Gambler's Cop, in his Secrets de la Prestidigitation et de la Magie, 1868; see p. 159 of Prof. Hoffmann's English translation, Secrets of Conjuring and Magic, 1878.