Volcabulum; or, The Rogue’s Lexicon

I am enjoying Lyndsay Faye’s The Gods of Gotham, a detective thriller set in New York City in the year 1845. One of the characters is George Washington Matsell, who was in fact the chief of the New York City Police Department that had been recently created.

In 1859 Chief Matsell (by then no longer chief) published Volcabulum; or, The Rogue’s Lexicon, a dictionary of the argot used by the criminal element in the city to speak openly with one another with reduced danger that they would be understood. (The Gods of Gotham refers to the lexicon as a work in progress and makes extensive use of its contents.) A similar language spoken by thieves in London was called Patter Flash. The American version included nonsense terms, random substitutions, archaic and foreign words, rhyming substitutions, and sly allusions. “Acteon” (whom Artemis turned into a stag with horns) meant a cuckold (horns signified a cuckold); “star-gazers” were prostitutes; “daisyville” and “grassville” meant the country; “cows and kisses” meant misses or ladies; and “mushroom-fakers” were umbrella hawkers. Some of the terms have entered common speech, like “tip” (information), “snitch” (informer) and “kicked the bucket” (dead) – or they might have been there already.

In addition to the main glossary of rogue flash, Vocabulum included annexes with the specialized language used by gamblers, billiard players, pugilists and stock brokers (which is itself an interesting litany).

Chief Matsell provided the following example of the patter:

Tim Sullivan buzzed a bloke and a shakester of a reader. His jomer stalled. Johnny Miller, who was to have his regulars, called out, "cop-bung," for as you see a fly-cop was marking. Jack speeled to the crib, when he found Johnny Doyle had been pulling down sawney for grub. He cracked a casa last night and fenced the swag. He told Jack as how Bill had flimped a yack, and pinched a swell of a spark-fawney, and had sent the yack to church, and got half a century and a finniff for the fawney.

Chief Matsell translated the passage as follows:

Tim Sullivan nicked the pockets of a gentleman and lady of a pocket-book and purse. Tim's fancy-girl stood near him and screened him from observation. Johnny Miller, who was to have a share of the plunder, called out to him: "Hand over the stolen property – a detective is observing your manoeuvres." Sullivan ran immediately to his house, when he found Johnny Doyle had provided something to eat, by stealing some bacon from a store-door. Doyle committed a burglary last night, and disposed of the property plundered. He told Sullivan that Bill had hustled a person, and obtained a watch, and also robbed a well-dressed gentleman of a diamond ring. The watch he sent to have the works taken out and put into another case, or the maker's name erased and another inserted; the ring realized him fifty-five dollars.

Some of the lengthier definitions have a morality lesson embedded in them. The “confidence man” was an example of “the rogue tribe … most liberally supplied with subjects” because “He knows his subject is only a knave wrongside out” who wants to seize the opportunity to take advantage of the man who is about to take advantage of him. Similarly, a “ghoul” was someone who followed women from houses of assignation to their homes and threatened to expose them to their husbands, relatives or friends unless they gave him not only money but also “the use of their bodies.”