Before “LOL” and “BRB” there was “Flash” — the language used by New York City’s professional rogues and rascals in the antebellum metropolis.
The origins of what would become flash patter in America lie in the murky caves of Derbyshire in the 16th century, among men who would as soon thrust a knife twixt your ribs as accept a second helping of mutton a la plunder. The language was abrupt, abbreviated and brutal. Albert Barrère observes cannily in his preface to “A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant” that some people regard all informal verbage “as the jargon of thieves, which has spread to costermongers and street-arabs.” Slang has long been associated with the underworld — and when it was imported to America, it was immortalized as the “language of crime.”
The first chief of the New York City Police Department (founded in 1845) was a social scientist before human eccentricity was widely considered a fit subject for study. In addition to family planning, gang activity and law enforcement ethics, Chief George Washington Matsell was fascinated by the codified language of the class his newly formed star police found themselves clashing against. Thousands of transplants from the British Isles had flooded the city to seek their fortunes, and naturally many of them hailed from the social strata best characterized as underfed. Some of them spoke thieves’ cant, or derivations thereof.
Matsell compiled all the local slang he could lay his hands on into a dictionary he called “The Secret Language of Crime,” intended for use by copper stars unfamiliar with street talk. One finds:
ACKRUFFS: River thieves; river pirates.
DROMEDARY: A clumsy, blundering fellow.
ETERNITY-BOX: A coffin.
FIGURE-DANCER: One who alters the numbers or figures on bank bills.
HISTORY OF THE FOUR KINGS: A pack of cards.
JANAZARIES: A mob of pickpockets.
KNOB-THATCHER: A wig-maker.
LAND-BROKER: An undertaker.
MUFFLERS: Boxing gloves.
OIL OF BARLEY: Strong beer.
PIN-MONEY: Money received by a married woman for prostituting her person.
PUT TO BED WITH A SHOVEL: Buried in the earth.
QUEER BIRDS: Reformed convicts who return to their old profession.
RABBIT-SUCKERS: Young spendthrifts; fast young men.
SLUICE YOUR GOB: Take a good long drink.
Most of Flash has been lost to history. But a few terms, like “birthday suit” for naked, survive still. And in the 1830s, New Yorkers abbreviated ironic misspellings of common phrases, something quite similar to textspeak today. So “oll correct” became OK.
Slang confounded George Washington Matsell, and fascinated him. But I’m grateful to men like Matsell who — despite being vaguely annoyed by patter — stopped to document our journey towards a universal fluency in the vilest of criminal slang.
Lyndsay Faye’s novel “The Gods of Gotham” (Amy Einhorn Books) — about the early days of the NYPD, with a healthy splash of Flash — is out now.