Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond LifeFlynt, Josiah
History
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life
Flynt, Josiah
Tramps
"Flagged" is a word which is not so clear, although it has been taken
from the railroader's parlance. It is used a great deal by pickpockets,
and means that they have allowed a certain person whom they intended to
victimize to pass on unmolested. It comes from the flagging of a train,
which can be either stopped or made to go on by the waving of a flag.
The person "flagged" seldom knows what has taken place, and every day in
city streets people are thus favored by gracious "dips," or pickpockets.
The dip's companion, the one who bumps up against the victim or
otherwise diverts his attention while the dip robs him, is called the
"stall."
"Just broken out" and "squared it" are phrases which very few would
understand on hearing them spoken by tramps and criminals in public. The
man who has "just broken out" is not, as I thought when I first heard
the words, one who has escaped from limbo, but rather one who has newly
joined the fraternity. The term is used in the sense in which it might
be applied to an epidemic. _Wanderlust_ (love of tramping, thieving,
drunkenness) is the disease with which the newcomer in outcast life is
supposed to be afflicted, and on allying himself with the brotherhood,
the malady is "officially" recognized as having appeared, or broken out.
"Squared it" I took to mean that a bargain or a quarrel had been
settled, but I was again mistaken. It signifies that a tramp or criminal
has reformed and become respectable. One who leaves the "road" for this
reason is said to have "squared it," because he has settled his account
with the brotherhood--he has finished with it.
The word "dead" is practically synonymous with "squared it." In using it
the tramp does not mean that the pal of whom he is speaking has departed
this life; "croaked" is the term for that. "Dead" means that he has left
the fraternity and is trying to live respectably. On one of my tramp
trips I was entertained at supper by a carpenter in Detroit, and during
the meal he confessed that he used to belong to my "push," the tramp
brotherhood.
"I've be'n dead now about ten years," he said, "I learned my trade in
the pen, 'n' when I got out I decided to square it. I was petered out."
On leaving his house he cautioned me not to say anything to the "'boes"
(hoboes) about his being my "meal-ticket." This is a tramp term for a
person who is "good" for a meal, and the carpenter did not care to have
this reputation.
When a man denounces to the police a beggar who has accosted him in the
street, the latter, in relating the experience at the "hang-out," says
that the "bloke beefed" on him (gave him away). In Cincinnati, one day,
I met an old tramp acquaintance who had been given away by a pal. He had
just come out of prison when I saw him, and looked so poorly, even for a
recently discharged convict, that I asked him for an explanation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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