The Criminal Alphabet (35 page)

See
Slaughter

In the old
borstal
system the
chaps
were the trainees with the power,
up-and-coming criminals who weren't afraid to fight either the system or other
borstal boys. Borstal was very black and white as far as the trainees were
concerned: if you weren't one of the chaps then you were a sap. The chaps were
usually career criminals in the making and many went on to commit bigger crimes and
to serve longer prison sentences.

See
Boat

To
chore
(a
Gypsy/Traveller word) something is to steal it or get it by other nefarious means,
as in ‘I went three fields over
and chored a nice trailer'. To
Gypsies and Travellers anything that is ‘choredy' is stolen and should be kept out
of sight.

See
Pinch (2)

Claret
is blood, because
they are of a similar colour. It's a word beloved by football hooligans, as in ‘We
done the ICF good and proper; there was claret all over the
gaff
'.

To
clock
someone is to
see them, as in ‘I clocked you up at Freddie's
gaff
last week'.

A
clump
is a punch or a
hit, taken from the sound of a fist or boot on flesh, as in ‘Talk to me like that
again and I'll give you a right clump'. In the old
borstal
system a
‘clumper' was a screw who was liable to give you a dig for any reason or no
reason.

Corned beef
is rhyming
slang for teeth, as in ‘Check out the corned beef on the geezer, they look like a
bowl of Sugar Puffs'. Teeth are also known as ‘railings' or ‘tombstones'.

Corey
is a Travellers'
word for penis but is also used to describe security guards who work in the
cash-in-transit
industry. Any guard who delivers or collects cash
tends to wear a crash helmet so is known to criminals as the corey because of their
resemblance to a walking penis.

See
Pony bag

A slang word for footwear but for
trainers in particular, used mainly by youngsters, as in ‘Nice
crepes
, blood, they is sick!' The word comes from the
crepe-soled shoes worn by Teddy Boys in the 1940s and '50s.

To have a
dekko
at
something is to look at it, as in ‘Have a dekko at these diamonds, they're top of
the range'. The word is possibly from the Urdu for to look or spy.

See
Butcher's
,
Clock

A
dog end
is what
remains of a cigarette after it has been put out, or ‘dogged out'. They're usually
collected and smoked by prisoners who have no access to funds to buy tobacco.

See
Swooper

To describe something (or someone) as the
dog's bollocks
is to class it as something very good indeed.
The phrase is sometimes shortened to ‘the dog's', and it's taken from the fact that
a good fighting dog has big balls.

If someone says ‘You are
doing me
nut
,' it means you are annoying them greatly and they're almost at the
point of doing you violence. ‘Nut' is slang is for head, so if you are doing
someone's nut it means you are getting into their head in an annoying way.

See
Doing me swede in

Doing me swede in
means
to annoy someone a lot, ‘swede' being slang for the head, as it is usually a large
round vegetable.

See
Doing me nut

The
double tap
is the
killing method adopted by professional killers. Favoured by assassins and the
Special Forces, it means to shoot one bullet into the chest or heart, and the second
bullet into the head in order to ensure death. It's sometimes also known as ‘belt
and braces'. For
one in the nut
, a large-calibre bullet has to be
used to ensure the death of the target, which, unless the killer is using a
suppressor or silencer, means a loud bang but, with the double tap, a smaller and
quieter calibre, such as a .22, can be used, which means a quick and quiet
killing.

To
dwell the box
is to
hang around somewhere for way too long, resulting in you getting arrested, as in
‘Jimmy's a fool to himself, if he hadn't dwelled the box he never would
have ended up nicked'. It can also mean to stay at home and not
go out, as in ‘I don't see him much nowadays; all he wants to do is dwell the
box'.

To be
elephant's
is to
be under the influence of alcohol (rhyming slang: elephant's trunk = drunk), as in
‘I only went out for one pint but ended up elephant's'.

See
Brahms

Fanny
can be either
female genitalia or lies and bullshit. If someone says you are ‘talking a load of
old fanny' it usually means you are lying or making things up. The word could come
from an earlier slang phrase, ‘sweet Fanny Adams', which has come to mean ‘nothing
at all'.

The original sweet Fanny Adams was an
eight-year-old girl who was murdered in Alton, in Hampshire, in 1867. She was
butchered by her killer, a solicitor's clerk named Frederick Baker, and parts of her
body were strewn around, including her eyeballs, which were thrown into a nearby
river. The trial was well reported and Frederick Baker was publicly hanged outside
Winchester Prison, the last public execution there, attended by over five thousand
onlookers. Two years later, the Royal Navy introduced new rations of tinned mutton
and the meat was so bad it became a standing joke that the tins were filled with the
butchered remains of Fanny Adams, so the term became slang for something worthless,
and then for nothing at all: ‘sweet FA'. With time, sweet FA changed to ‘sweet fuck
all', meaning nothing and plenty of it. Now it has evolved further to mean a
lie.

See
Fuck All

A
fiver
is usually taken
to mean a £5 note, as in ‘Yeah, he gave me a tenner but he still owes me a
fiver'.

See
Bluey

Fix up
is a common
expression used by young tearaways, usually, though not exclusively, of West Indian
origin. It's an instruction, usually issued in the form of a threat, to sort
yourself out and stop acting like a fool, as in ‘You better fix up before I see you
next, or man will get
vex
'.

See
Vex

A
flasher
is a sex
offender who exposes his genitals to people in order to get a sexual thrill. They're
known as flashers because they will usually just give a quick flash of the goods
before making their getaway.

A
fridge
is a man
(rhyming slang: fridge freezer = geezer), usually one with criminal connections or
tendencies, as in ‘Yeah, I see the fridge with the
hooky
currency
and he's willing to
have a trade
.'

See
Having a Trade

Absolutely nothing, as in ‘I spent eight
hours cutting my
way into that peter and when I got it open there
was
fuck all
in there.' Can also be shortened to its initials ‘FA'
or to
‘
sweet FA'
.

See
Fanny

A
gaff
is a place and
can be used in many contexts, as in ‘I was up at me bird's gaff having a cup of rosy
[tea]' or ‘I hate Bricko [Brixton nick], it's a fucking terrible gaff'.

See
Dwell the box

To get
rushed
means to
be attacked by several assailants at once. It's usually used by younger criminals or
prisoners to describe an attack, as in ‘Yeah, man, I punched one screw boy in his
face and the rest of them rushed me.' It can also be used to mean
steaming
, as in ‘Twenty of us rushed the jewellery shop and got
nuff nuff gold'.

Going through the slips
is getting out of a tight or dangerous situation. It means you have found a clever
way out. It can also be used in an insulting manner in order to imply cowardice or
cooperation with the authorities, as in ‘Funny that, weren't it? All the lads got
collared but you managed to go through the slips.'

This is quite an old-fashioned piece of
rhyming slang,
usually used by old-time villains to mean a large
scotch, as in ‘Two pints of mild and a
gold watch
please,
barman'.

See
Pig's ear

A
grand
is £1,000, also
known in rhyming slang as ‘a bag of sand'. The word is taken from the fact that it
is a grand amount of money, particularly back in the 1920s, when it was first
used.

See
Monkey
,
Pony

Growlers
is an
eighteenth-century criminal word for pistols, as in ‘I'd have been taken by the
watchman if I'd not had my growlers with me'. Pistols were also known as ‘barkers'
because of the noise they made when discharged. In those days, even burglars tended
to carry at least one pistol while committing a crime, and some of them weren't shy
about using one, as homeowners tended to dish out their own brand of justice if they
caught criminals in the act.

To
half-inch
something
is to steal it (rhyming slang: half-inch =
pinch
), as in ‘Yeah, I'm
doing a three-stretch for half-inching a van load of pussies.'

To
have it away
means to
escape from prison or from a criminal venture that has gone wrong, as in
‘
Old Bill
turned up so I had to have it away'. It can also mean to have
sexual intercourse, as in ‘I had it away with that little barmaid from the Red Lion
last night'.

See
Bromleys

There are two meanings to
heavy
in the criminal world. The first is a way of describing
the crime of armed robbery – the heavy – so-called because of the seriousness of the
crime and the fact that it attracts heavy sentences. The second is to describe
someone who uses violence and intimidation in order to achieve their ends, as in
‘Then the Twins turned up with their heavies and I had no choice but to hand over
the protection money'.

See
Strong Arm

A word used by youngsters to denote great
body size and a hard demeanour, taken from ‘henchman', as in ‘Bwoy, I don't really
fancy going up against him; have you seen how
hench
he is?'.

Hitting the penny
is
slang for being knocked out or knocked down. It is rhyming slang – Penny Draw =
Floor. Also known as ‘hitting the rory' (Rory McGraw = Floor). Back at the turn of
the twentieth century tobacco was sold loose and you could buy a ‘penny draw' of
tobacco – the tobacconist would draw a handful of loose tobacco from his bundle and
wrap it up in paper for you and for this you would pay 1 penny. Still a very popular
slang phrase, as in
– ‘I gave him one knuckle sandwich and he hit
the penny', or ‘As soon as the flying squad jumped us, Tony hit the penny like a
sack of spuds!

Hooking
is a method of
operation used by car thieves which involves putting a fishing rod or any long, thin
stick through the letterbox of a home in order to ‘hook' car and house keys from a
hallway. Traditionally, most householders would leave their keys on a table or ledge
in the hallway, and thieves knew this. It used to be a simple matter to spot a nice
expensive car parked in a driveway, then creep up to the front door of the house and
peep through the letterbox to see if the keys were close by.

If something is considered
hooky
, it is probably stolen, from the saying ‘By hook or by
crook', as in ‘Hide that telly, Doris,
Old Bill
are on their way
round and that set is definitely hooky'.

See
Bent

Your
hooter
is your
nose, so called because you blow it, as in ‘Keep giving me grief, mate, and you'll
get a punch in the hooter'.

To have the
hump
with
someone means you are annoyed with them, as in ‘That
mug
is giving
me the right hump'.
Taken from the action of hunching up your
shoulders in annoyance or irritation.

An Irish Travellers' word for a pensioner
or elderly person,
hump
is taken from the humped back or stooped
posture of some old people. Unfortunately, despite their talk of honour, a lot of
Travellers and Gypsies actively target the elderly in their crimes and have no
compunction about leaving vulnerable old people with no money and in a state of
terror.