This nocturnal fraternity met in the days of Queen Anne: but it had been for many previous years the favourite amusement of dissolute young men to form themselves into Clubs and Associations for committing all sorts of excesses in the public streets, and alike attacking orderly pedestrians, and even defenceless women. These Clubs took various slang designations. At the Restoration they were "Mums" and "Tityre-tus." They were succeeded by the "Hectors" and "Scourers," when, says Shadwell, "a man could not go from the Rose Tavern to the Piazza once, but he must venture his life twice." Then came the "Nickers," whose delight it was to smash windows with showers of halfpence; next were the "Hawkabites;" and lastly, the "Mohocks." These last are described in the _Spectator_, No. 324, as a set of men who have borrowed their name from a sort of cannibals, in India, who subsist by plundering and devouring all the nations about them. The president is styled "Emperor of the Mohocks;" and his arms are a Turkish crescent, which his imperial majesty bears at present in a very extraordinary manner engraven upon his forehead; in imitation of which the Members prided themselves in tattooing; or slashing people's faces with, as Gay wrote, "new invented wounds." Their avowed design was mischief, and upon this foundation all their rules and orders were framed. They took care to drink themselves to a pitch beyond reason or humanity, and then made a general sally, and attack all who were in the streets. Some were knocked down, others stabbed, and others cut and carbonadoed. To put the watch to a total rout, and mortify some of those inoffensive militia, was reckoned a _coup d'éclat_. They had special barbarities, which they executed upon their prisoners. "Tipping the lion" was squeezing the nose flat to the face, and boring out the eyes with their fingers. "Dancing-masters" were those who taught their scholars to cut capers by running swords through their legs. The "Tumblers" set women on their heads. The "Sweaters" worked in parties of half-a-dozen, surrounding their victims with the points of their swords. The Sweater upon whom the patient turned his back, pricked him in "that part whereon school-boys are punished;" and, as he veered round from the smart, each Sweater repeated this pinking operation; "after this jig had gone two or three times round, and the patient was thought to have sweat sufficiently, he was very handsomely rubbed down by some attendants, who carried with them instruments for that purpose, when they discharged him." An adventure of this kind is narrated in No. 332 of the _Spectator_: it is there termed a bagnio, for the orthography of which the writer consults the sign-posts of the bagnio in Newgate-street and that in Chancery-lane. Another savage diversion of the Mohocks was their thrusting women into barrels, and rolling them down Snow or Ludgate Hill, as thus sung by Gay, in his _Trivia_:--