Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets: An Anthology of Elizabethan Low Life

by Gamini Salgado (Editor, Introduction)

Cony Catchers and Bawdy Anthology of Elizabethan Low Life (English Library):

Genres: History, British Literature, Renaissance

391 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 1972

Reviews

[chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 it was pretty interesting, just mega tedious and took me forever to get through

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an incredible and different book; a compendium of literature born of and documenting the organized Elizabethan criminal class. I was intrigued by the varied taxonomy of "cony-catching" cons and crooks from common pickpockets and prostitutes to more exotic varieties like those hook things with poles through windows, the "jarkman" vagabond counterfeiter of documents (as licenses, passes, certificates), and illegal coal crews. The horse thieves ("priggers of prancers" as in the colorful slang terminology, glossary on 146) played a role like long-term car thieves, including obscuring marks then as someone would w/VINs now. It seems whenever I read of an epoch's crime body, there is likely an element of disaffected veterans that were not successfully re-integrated into society. Among the ways that shows here is the heavies, the "rufflers".

Then there is "co" (pp. 66, 138), apparently a boy, a rogue, or both. Why can't this 2-letter word be legal in Scrabble and Words With Friends?!

It amazes me how much social engineering, a hallmark of spearphishing and more today, was so important to these crooks. Also, the editors' decisions between footnotes and endnotes is schizophrenic.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite books of the moment and I'm always dipping into it for a quick hit of Elizabethan criminal slang! Example:

"Here I set before the good reader the lewd, lousy language of these loitering lusks and lazy lorels [...]which language they term pedlars' French, an unknown tongue only but to these bold, beastly, bawdy beggars and vain vagabonds, being half mingled with English when it is familiarly talked."

They loved their alliteration in Elizabethan times! It's pure poetry.