18-660: Coldbath Fields Prison , also formerly known as the Middlesex House of Correction and Clerkenwell Gaol and informally known as the Steel , was a prison in the Mount Pleasant area of Clerkenwell , London . Founded in the reign of James I (1603–1625) it was completely rebuilt in 1794 and extended in 1850. It housed prisoners on short sentences of up to two years. Blocks emerged to segregate felons, misdemeanants and vagrants. Coldbath Fields Prison (also known as
36-535: A justice of the peace , included examples in his account A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors , first published in 1566. He collected his information from vagabonds he interrogated at his home in Essex . He also called it "pedlars' French" or "pelting speech", and was told that it had been invented as a secret language some 30 years earlier. The earliest records of canting words are included in The Highway to
54-549: A separate group from the standard vagabonds, and cant was fully developed within 50 years of their first arrival in England. Comparison of Romany words in the Winchester Confessions taken in 1616 with modern Welsh Romani show high commonality. This record also distinguished between Romany and Cant words and again the attributions of the words to the different categories is consistent with later records. There
72-453: A separate vocabulary – Angloromani was used for day to day matters, while cant was used for criminal activities. A thief in 1839 claimed that the cant he had seen in print was nothing like the cant then used by Roma, thieves and beggars. He also said that each of these used distinct vocabularies, which overlapped; the Roma having a cant word for everything, and the beggars using a lower style than
90-553: Is a cant , cryptolect, or argot which was formerly used by thieves, beggars, and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries. It is now mostly obsolete and used in literature and fantasy role-playing , although individual terms continue to be used in the criminal subcultures of Britain and the United States. Cant is a common feature of rogue literature of
108-457: Is doubt as to the extent to which the words in canting literature were taken from street usage, or were adopted by those wishing to show that they were part of a real or imagined criminal underworld. The transmission has almost certainly been in both directions. The Winchester Confessions indicate that Roma who were engaged in criminal activities, or those who were associated with them and had a good knowledge of their language, were using cant, but as
126-590: The Elizabethan era in England , in both pamphlets and theatre . It was claimed by Samuel Rid to have been devised around 1530 by two vagabond leaders – Giles Hather, of the "Egyptians" , and Cock Lorell, of the "Quartern of Knaves" – at The Devil's Arse , a cave in Derbyshire , "to the end that their cozenings , knaveries and villainies might not so easily be perceived and known". Thomas Harman ,
144-564: The Middlesex House of Correction) was originally a prison run by local magistrates and where most prisoners served short sentences. Coldbath Fields also served as a debtor's prison . It took its name from Cold Bath Spring, a medicinal spring discovered in 1697. The prison housed men, women and children until 1850, when the women and children moved to Tothill Fields Bridewell in Victoria (Westminster) leaving only male offenders over
162-508: The drolls he published for performance at markets, fairs and camps. The influence of this work can be seen from the independent life taken on by the "Beggar King Clause", who appears as a real character in later literature. The ceremony for anointing the new king was taken from Thomas Harman and described as being used by Romani people in the nineteenth century. Bampfylde Moore Carew , who published his picaresque Life in 1745, claimed to have been chosen to succeed "Clause Patch" as King of
180-533: The stanza As he went through Coldbath-fields, he saw A solitary cell ; And the devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint For improving his prisons in hell. In Samuel Butler 's semi-autobiographical novel ' The Way of All Flesh ' the hero, Ernest Pontifex is sentenced to six months hard labour in Coldbath Fields prison: chapters 64-70. Thieves%27 cant Thieves' cant (also known as thieves' argot , rogues' cant , or peddler's French )
198-694: The Beggars, and many editions of his work included a canting dictionary. Such dictionaries, often based on Harman's, remained popular, including The Canting Academy, or Devils Cabinet opened , by Richard Head (1673), and BE's Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1699). It was commonly believed that cant developed from Romany . Etymological research now suggests a substantial correlation between Romany words and cant, and equivalents, in many European languages. However, in England, Scotland, and Wales this does not apply. The Egyptians , as they were known, were
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#1732779638788216-468: The East End of London. The Middlesex magistrates and police offices were a key part of this strategy. In 1798 the magistrates, including Joseph Merceron , the corrupt 'Boss of Bethnal Green', became embroiled in a scandal over the conditions at Coldbath Fields, where several radical (also known as reformist) party sympathisers, including Colonel Edward Despard , were being held without trial. The scandal
234-636: The Spitalfields by Robert Copland c. 1536 . Copland and Harman were used as sources by later writers. A spate of rogue literature started in 1591 with Robert Greene 's series of five pamphlets on cozenage and coney-catching . These were continued by other writers, including Thomas Middleton , in The Black Book and Thomas Dekker , in The Bellman of London (1608), Lantern and Candlelight (1608), and O per se O (1612). Cant
252-502: The age of 17. Despite its aspirations to be more humanitarian (its redesign was by John Howard ), it became notorious for its strict regime of silence and its use of the treadmill . Since 1793 Britain had been at war with France, and William Pitt ’s government became increasingly drawn into attempts to restrain the growth of radical republican societies, such as the London Corresponding Society , especially in
270-659: The treadmill house; no prisoners were hurt but two firemen were injured. The prison closed in 1885. The site was transferred to the Post Office in 1889 and its buildings were gradually replaced. The last sections were demolished in 1929 for an extension of the Letter Office. Today, the site is occupied by the Mount Pleasant sorting office . The Devil's Thoughts (1799), a poem attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (and others), contains
288-625: The use of cant words in Jacobean theatre. Middleton and Dekker included it in The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cut-Purse (1611). It was used extensively in The Beggars' Bush , a play by Francis Beaumont , John Fletcher and Philip Massinger , first performed in 1622, but possibly written c. 1614. The play remained popular for two centuries, and the canting section was extracted as The Beggars Commonwealth by Francis Kirkman as one of
306-547: Was exposed in Parliament by the young radical MP Sir Francis Burdett , who used it as the basis of his campaign against the chair of the magistrates William Mainwaring and his son George in the 1802 and 1804 Middlesex parliamentary elections. During the early 19th century, the prison temporarily housed members of the Cato Street Conspiracy . In March 1877 a fire, which started in the bakehouse, destroyed
324-414: Was included together with descriptions of the social structure of beggars, the techniques of thieves including coney-catching, gull-groping , and gaming tricks, and the descriptions of low-lifes of the kind which have always been popular in literature. Harman included a canting dictionary which was copied by Thomas Dekker and other writers. That such words were known to a wide audience is evidenced by
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