Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II.: Or, The Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq., and His Cousin, the Hon. Tom Dashall, Through the Metropolis; Exhibiting a Living Picture of Fashionable Characters, Manners, and Amusements in High and Low Life (1821)Badcock, John, active 1816-1830
General
Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II.: Or, The Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq., and His Cousin, the Hon. Tom Dashall, Through the Metropolis; Exhibiting a Living Picture of Fashionable Characters, Manners, and Amusements in High and Low Life (1821)
Badcock, John, active 1816-1830
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
At this moment a Street-keeper made way through the crowd, and Tom
and Bob keeping close in his rear, came directly up to the principal
performers in this interesting scene, and found honest Pat Murphy
holding the man by his collar, while he was twisting and writhing to get
released from the strong and determined grasp of the athletic Hibernian.
Pat no sooner saw our Heroes, than he burst out with a lusty “Arroo!
arroo! there's the sweet-looking jontleman that's been robbed by a dirty
_spalpeen_ that's not worth the tail of a rotten red-herring. I'll give
charge of dis here pick'd bladebone of a dead donkey that walks about in
God's own daylight, dirting his fingers wid what don't belong to him at
all at all. So sure as the devil's in his own house, and that's London,
you've had your pocket pick'd, my darling, and that's news well worth
hearing”--addressing himself to Dashall.
By this harangue it was pretty clearly understood that Murphy had been
in pursuit of the pickpocket, and Tom immediately gave charge.
The man, however, continued to declare he was not the right
person--“That, so help him G----d, the Irishman had got the wrong
bull by the tail--that he was a b----dy _snitch_{2} and that he would
_sarve him out_{3}--that he wished
1 _Brush_--Be off.
2 _Snitch_--A term made use of by the light-fingered tribe,
to signify an informer, by whom they have been impeached or
betrayed--So a person who turns king's evidence against his
accomplices is called a Snitch.
3 _Serve him out_--To punish, or be revenged upon any person
for any real or supposed injury.
~84~~he might meet him out of St. Giles's, and he would _wake_{ 1} him
with an _Irish howl_.”
1 Wake with an Irish howl--An Irish Wake, which is no
unfrequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of St. Giles's
and Saffron Hill, is one of the most comically serious
ceremonies which can well be conceived, and certainly
baffles all powers of description. It is, however,
considered indispensable to wake the body of a de-ceased
native of the sister kingdom, which is, by a sort of mock
lying in state, to which all the friends, relatives, and
fellow countrymen and women, of the dead person, are
indiscriminately admitted; and among the low Irish this duty
is frequently performed in a cellar, upon which occasions
the motley group of assembled Hibernians would form a
subject for the pencil of the most able satirist.
Upon one of these occasions, when Murtoch Mulrooney, who had
suffered the sentence of the law by the common hangman, for
a footpad robbery, an Englishman was induced by a friend of
the deceased to accompany him, and has left on record the
following account of his entertainment:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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