I’m delighted to imagine Victorian readers scandalizing themselves with the Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, published in London in 1860. [via Hacker News]
Could you have learnt to patter flash the argot of costermongers, hawking sanguinary James and other belly-timber? You might recognize these types by their Newgate knockers, those aggerawators tucked behind a lug on the nuddikin. Hear them shout their prices: saltee, madza poona, exis-evif yeneps! Or you may prefer the rapping of beaker hunters, needy mizzlers, and such — all Dutch uncles now, but common when pudding snammers were wido in the push. This was an era of shivering jemmy on the high fly munging for a bit of cagmag, when pure finders collected danna amid fencers of cakey-pannum. At night, on London’s streets, stallsmen and the doxies cooled the esclop for their buz-bloaks. And those who missed their tip, like nibblers done for a ramp, climbed the vertical-care-grinder stunned on skilly. Yet it was all Yorkshire Estates compared to drummers caught with hocus: that wretched lot cried hookey walker as they lumped the lighter to dance on nothing. In other words, stiff’uns, cold meat, burked.
cf. Urban Dictionary. I think there should be a new edition, complete with the latest cadger’s map of a begging district.
