Cantering Through Cant (17)

In or to merry a pin, according to the indefatigable Francis Grose in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, is to be “almost drunk”. It is an allusion, he says, to a type of tankard used mainly in the north, which had silver pegs or pins set at equal distances from top to bottom. Everyone drinking from this communal cup was to swallow a measure equal to the amount between two pins. “If he drinks more or less”, he reports, “he was to continue drinking until he ended at a pin; by this means persons unaccustomed to measure their draughts were obliged to drink the whole tankard. Hence, when a person was a little elevated with drink, he was said to have drunk to a merry pin”.

I like a good scam and this one involves lotteries and insurance. In defining pigeons as “sharpers”, Grose recounts this form of egregious sharp practice. The so-called pigeons would wait ready mounted at London’s Guildhall while the first two or three numbers of the lottery were being drawn, which they receive from an associate on a card. They then ride at full speed to some distant insurance office, where another of the gang, usually a decent looking woman, is waiting and to whom they give the numbers. She then insures the numbers for a considerable sum. A case of “biting the biter”, Grose wryly notes. In the days before telegraphy, speed and inside knowledge could be the keys to a fortune.

The name given to these fraudsters comes from the verb to pigeon which meant “to cheat”, as well they did.