Lost London (26 page)

Academy
A brothel

Acorn
The Gallows, from ‘riding the horse sired from an acorn’

Apple dumpling shop
A woman’s breasts

Beggar’s bullets
Stones, for throwing at the wealthy

Blindman’s holiday
Night or darkness

Blue skin
Mixed race

Botch
A tailor

To box a Jesuit
To masturbate

Catch Fart
A footman, catching his master’s farts

Dead Chelsea By God!
A soldier would shout this after receiving a wound in battle, a reference to the military hospital there
.

Chummage
Paid by rich prisoners to make their roommates sleep elsewhere, for example, on the stairs

City college
Newgate Prison

Clapham
A sexually transmitted disease, ‘he went out by Had’em, and came round by Clapham home’

Corinthians
Those who visit brothels

Covent Garden Ague
Sexually Transmitted Disease

Covent Garden Nun
A prostitute

Deadly Nevergreen
The gallows, bearing grisly fruit all year round

Derrick
The hangman, sometime thought to have given his name to modern-day derricks, lifting mechanisms used at ports etc

Dick
During the reign of Queen Dick, that is never

Doll
A Bartholomew doll – a slutty over-dressed woman, like the toys sold at Bartholomew Fair

Drury Lane Vestal
A prostitute, after the area, formally a major location of the sex trade

Earth Bath
The grave

English Burgundy
Porter – a stout invented in London

Execution day
The day you do the washing

Farting Crackers
Trousers

Feague
To feague a horse was to stick ginger, or a live eel, up its rectum to make it appear frisky before selling it

Friday face
During Cromwell’s time it was compulsory to fast on Fridays, a habit that continued after the reformation – hence Friday face

St Giles’ Greek
The language of thieves and gypsies, who were mainly said to live in the St Giles area of London

Greenwich barbers
The men who dig sand in Greenwich, from their habit of shaving off the sandbanks

Hasty pudding
A poor road ‘The way through Wandsworth is quite a hasty pudding’

Holborn Hill
Riding backwards up Holborn Hill, to go to the gallows, on the way to Tyburn

Hopping Giles
Being disabled, St Giles was the patron saint of the disabled

Irish beauty
A woman with two black eyes

Job’s Dock
The ward for venereal disease at St Barts

Laystall
Dunghills of human waste

Lily White
Chimney sweeps

Lion
Sending lads to see the lions washed at Tower ditch was a longstanding April fools joke for city dwellers. Sticking two fingers up someone’s
nose and pulling was said to make a lion of them

Little Barbary
The village of Wapping

Little ease
An ancient prison cell in the Guildhall, being so low that a lad could not stand in it, hence little ease

Long Meg
After the famous tall woman of Westminster, Long Meg became a sarcastic term for any female of height

Maccaroni
A fop or dandy. Returning from the Grand Tour with a taste for all thing Italian – food, clothing and hair – maccaroni’s strutted around the
city

Milk the pigeon
To attempt the impossible

Monkey
Using a long straw or tube to illicitly drink wine or other booze from a cask was said to be ‘sucking the monkey’

Mooncurser
Link boys, who used to provide light to walk citizens home before the advent of street lighting, were said to be mooncursers, as the moon did them out of
work

Nappy house
A brothel

Neck verse
A convict could escape execution by claiming Benefit of the Clergy, which meant in practice reading in Latin the first verse of Psalm 51

Nit squeezer
A hairdresser

Noll
Oliver Cromwell, Old Noll

Nutcrackers
The pillory

Nypper
Someone who cut purses, which used to be worn on a string from the clothing

Oliver’s skull
A chamber pot

Paddington fair day
A hanging day, Tyburn being in the parish of Paddington

Paviour’s workshop
The street

Picture frame
The sheriff’s picture frame – the gallows or the pillory

Piss pot hall
A house in Clapton, Hackney, built by a maker of chamber pots

Polish the king’s iron
To be imprisoned was said to be polishing the king’s iron, to be in fetters

Porridge island
An area inhabited by cooks in the alleyway leading from St Martin’s churchyard

Queer plungers
People who threw themselves in the Thames to be rescued by a friend and taken to the Humane Society, who paid for the rescue of the destitute

Riding St George
Having sex with the lady on top, riding on the dragon as it were, said to be a good way of conceiving a bishop

Romeville
London

Rushers
A class of thieves who knocked on the doors of the wealthy, knowing them to be away, and when the door was opened, rushing in and taking the valuables

On St Geoffrey’s day
Never, there is no St Geoffrey

Salesman’s dog
Someone employed to bark out the wares of a shopkeeper

Schism shop
A meeting house of dissenters

Scotch warming pan
A fart, or a woman

Sharks
The very highest rank of pickpockets

Sidepocket
Wanting something unnecessary – ‘he needs it like a dog needs a sidepocket’

Silver laced
Replete with lice

Smithfield bargain
A marriage undertaken purely for the profit of one of the party, Smithfield was where women were reputedly sold like cattle

Tangerines
Debtors at Newgate, so called because they were
housed in a room called Tangier Thames

The impossible
He’ll find no way to set the Thames on fire

Three penny upright
A prostitute who charges three pence, and has sex while standing up

Tom turdman
The man who collects night soil

Tom of bedlam
A lunatic, Shakespeare’s Poor Tom from
King Lear

Touch bone and whistle
Anyone who has farted may be pinched and punched, until he has touched bone (the teeth) and whistled

Tower hill play
A kick in the bum and a slap in the face

Vice admiral of the narrow seas
A man who, when drunk, pisses under the table in his neighbour’s shoes

Vowel
To vowel is to pay one’s gambling debts with an I.O.U.

Walking up against the wall
To run up a tab in a boozer, where one’s tally was often chalked up on the wall

Wasp
A prostitute with a venereal disease, so called because of the sting in her tail

Westminster wedding
When a rogue marries a whore

Windward Passage
Homosexual, one who navigates by the Windward Passage

Zed
A crocked or deformed person, shaped like the letter