Twelve Of The Gang
Having been released by my body-snatcher I settled down in a Bohemian bungery and proceeded to get drunk as a boiled owl. And very pleasant it was too. Perhaps I should explain the purport of a sentence which, otherwise, due to the high content of Victorian slang might seem incomprehensible.
A body-snatcher was a term used between the 1840s and 1860s in London to describe a cab driver. Their practice was to snatch a fare into their cab to prevent the unwitting client from falling into the hands of their rivals. It owed its origin to the practice of the resurrection men who lifted newly buried corpses from their graves to feed the unsatiable demand of medics for fresh bodies to extend their knowledge of the human anatomy. The most famous practitioners of this shady crime were Burke and Hare.
A Bohemian bungery was a pub, particularly one frequented by struggling authors, especially apt in my case. Bohemian was a term introduced by Henri Murger in his Scenes of Bohemian Life, published in 1851, to describe artists, authors, and musicians who lived an unconventional life and struggled to make a living. Bungery was a term used by abolitionists to describe a public house, a word derived from the bung which was used to stop the contents of a barrel from spilling out.
Boiled owl was yet another euphemism for being drunk. Its derivation is not clear, but one suggestion is that it is a corruption of being as drunk as Abel Doyle which, if so, suggests Irish roots. One correspondent in December 1892 took grave offence to this calumny on the drinking habits of an owl. He wrote “it is a well-known fact in natural history that a parrot is the only bird that can sing after partaking of wine, spirits, or beer; for it is now universally agreed by all scientific men who have investigated the subject that the expression “Drunk as a boiled owl” is a gross libel upon a highly respectable teetotal bird which, even in its unboiled state, drinks nothing stronger than rainwater”.
Be that as it may, it is a lovely phrase. Cheers!
