Rechtub Klat

In Australia, butchers have a secret language called 'Rechtub Klat' - Butchers' Talk - which enables them to conduct private conversations while leaving their customers unawares. It is essentially a form of Pig Latin, involving reversing words and sometimes letters within words. The language has been reduced to a core vocabulary of about 20-30 words nowadays, but it is said that older butchers could have entire conversations in it.

A similar method is used to create 'Largonji' or 'Loucherbem', the French butchers' slang first recorded in the nineteenth century; though it is doubtless much older. This is a little more complex than the Aussie version: the first letter of the word is moved to the end and one of a wide variety of suffixes is attached, such as -é, -em, -gue, -i, -ic, -iche, -oque, -ot, -qué, or -uche. An L is then placed at the beginning of the word: all Largonji words start with L.

Thus 'boucher' (butcher) becomes Loucherbem, 'jargon' Largonji, 'à poil' (naked) is à loilpé or à loilpuche, and 'marteau' (hammer; crazy person) is un larteaumic.

In the UK, the dodgier class of butcher used Cant, the 'Flash Language' - a criminal slang originating in the 18th century or earlier. Hiding their doings behind this jingo, they would unwittingly 'bite' (con) the 'rum chubs' (gullible customers).

One rural Essex butcher who had reason to know Cant both from working out his apprenticeship in Whitechapel for six years, and from afterwards becoming an associate of the Gregory Gang - perhaps the most violent gang of housebreakers known in the 18th century - was Dick Turpin.

Learning Cant to write 'Dick' has been a real joy for me. I adore words anyway - languages, synonyms, argots, patois, dialects, gibberish. But private tongues, and especially criminal languages, are particularly exciting: they wear metaphor and allegory at their very heart; one of the many Canting phrases for being hanged, for example, is to 'stick your head in the Sheriff's picture frame'. They are naturally poetic. Small wonder that the street-thug balladeer, Francois Villon, used thieves' argot in his 'Seven Ballads'.

Transportation of Britain's criminals led to the transportation of their language. Cant travelled to Australia with the Botany Bay exiles, where it eventually metamorphosed into the Rechtub Klat still spoken today. In the UK, with some additions from the Romany language, it became Polari, the secret dialect of gays.

Fresh Brains Every Day...

... the sign above his head reads;

well: we do our best.

Humble Pie

Humble Pie was made from the numbles of deer.
Which were basically the offal, the cheap cuts.
From the Middle English: nombles fillet of venison,
which in turn is a dissimilated variation of lomble
from the latin lumbulus
itself a diminutive of lumbus loin.



Humble Pie was also a band in the sixties,
with Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton.
and very good they were too.

Beef Language

Rostbiff, D-Rump, Striploin, Neck,

Eye Round, Silverside, Topside, Flank,

Rib Set, Cube Roll, Knuckle, Blade,

Outside Flat, Chuck, Butt,

Brisket Navel End.

Interloquutars R and M

R: With this and that like talk consumed was our dinner, and after the table was removed, in came one of the waiters with a fair silver bowl full of Dice and Cards. "Now masters," quoth the goodman, "who is so disposed, fall to: here is my 20 li., win it and wear it." Then each man chose his game, some kept the good man company at the Hazard, some matched themselves as a new game called Primero.

M: And what did you the while?

R: They egged me to have made one at Dice, and told me it was a shame for a gentleman not to keep gentlemen company for his 20 or 40 crowns. Nevertheless because I alleged ignorance, the gentlewoman said I should not sit idle all the rest being occupied, and so we 2 fell to Saunt five games a Crown.

M: And how sped you in the end?

R: In good faith, I passed not for the loss of 20 or 40 s., for acquaintance, and so much I think it cost me, and then I left off, marry, the Diceplayers stack well by it and made very fresh play, saving one or two that were clean shriven, & had no more money to lose.

A Manifest Detection of the Most Vile and Detestable Use of Diceplay,

and Other Practices

Gilbert Walker (1550)

and the knuckle bone connects to...

The Distal Phalanx connects to the Middle Phalanx
And the Middle Phalanx connects to the Proximal Phalanx
And the Proximal Phalanx connects to Fifth Metacarpal

Oh! Hear the word of the Lord.

Dice were one time fashioned from knuckles, hence the nickname bones

Bare Bones

BONES. Dice.
TO COG. To cheat with dice; also to coax or wheedle, To cog a die; to conceal or secure a die. To cog a dinner; to wheedle one out of a dinner.
DISPATCHERS. Loaded or false dice.
DOCTORS. Loaded dice, that will run but two or three chances. They put the doctors upon him; they cheated him with loaded dice.
DOWN HILLS. Dice that run low.
DRIBBLE. A method of pouring out, as it were, the dice from the box, gently, by which an old practitioner is enabled to cog one of them with his fore-finger.
ELBOW SHAKER. A gamester, one who rattles Saint Hugh's bones, i.e. the dice.
FULHAMS. Loaded dice are called high and lowmen, or high and low fulhams, by Ben Jonson and other writers of his time; either because they were made at Fulham, or from that place being the resort of sharpers.
HIGH JINKS. A gambler at dice, who, having a strong head, drinks to intoxicate his adversary, or pigeon.
LONG GALLERY. Throwing, or rather trundling, the dice the whole length of the board.
MUMCHANCE. An ancient game like hazard, played with dice: probably so named from the silence observed in playing at it.
TO NAP. To cheat at dice by securing one chance.
To NICK. To win at dice, to hit the mark just in the nick of time, or at the critical moment.
PASSAGE. A camp game with three dice: doublets, making up ten or more, to pass or win; any other chances lose.
RATTLE. A dice-box.
SHAKE. To shake one's elbow; to game with dice.
SHARPER. A cheat, one that lives by his wits. Sharpers tools; a fool and false dice.
SLUR. To slur, is a method of cheating at dice: also to cast a reflection on any one's character, to scandalize.
STAMP. A particular manner of throwing the dice out of the box, by striking it with violence against the table.
TATS. False dice.
TAT MONGER. One that uses false dice.
UPHILLS. False dice that run high.

From: DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE:

A DICTIONARY OF BUCKISH SLANG, UNIVERSITY WIT,

AND PICKPOCKET ELOQUENCE

compiled by Captain Francis Grose (1811)

The Names of Dice:

A bale of bard sink deuces
A bale of flat sink deuces
A bale of flat sixe aces
A bale of bard sixe aces
A bale of bard cater treys
A bale of flat cater treys
A bale of fullans of the best making
A bale of light graniers
A bale of Langrets contrary to the vantage
A bale of Gourds with as many high men as low men for passage
A bale of demies
A bale of long dice for even and odd
A bale of bristles
A bale of direct contraries

LOCKIT:

Thus gamesters united in friendship are found,

Though they know that their industry all is a cheat;

They flock to their prey at the dice-box's sound,

And join to promote one another's deceit.

But if by mishap

They fail of a chap,

To keep in their hands, they each other entrap.

Like pikes, lank with hunger, who miss of their ends,

They bite their companions, and prey on their friends.

John Gay, THE BEGGAR'S OPERA (1728)

Dutch Dick

Just been following the footsteps of Mr Turpin to Amsterdam, not on the run it has to be said, but an enjoyable weekend, dancing the night away, as Dick must often have done, on the eleventh floor of the old Post Office headoffices to a throbbing beat set up by London DJs. [There was a lot of Drum and Bass in the eighteenth century, I've been told]

If he stayed, or worked, on the waterfront, this might have been his view, give or take a few curtains and the new licks of paint.

On Wednesday Night last...

... a Servant to Mr. Thompson one of the Keepers on Epping Forest (who lives at Fair Maid Bottom) saw the famous Turpin in the Forest, and suspecting he was going to steal some Particular Horse in that Neighbourhood, went to a House at King's Oak and borrowed a Gun, and charged it, and said he would go and take Turpin, who was not far off, and accordingly went with the Gun after him; but approaching with his Gun too near (apprehending, it is supposed, he had only Pistols) Turpin saw him, and immediately discharged a Carbine at him loaded with Slugs, and shot him into the Belly dead on the Spot, and he now lies at Forest Oak: Turpin rode away and quitted his Horse, which was on Thursday Night at the Pound at Waltham Abbey. The same Day all that Part of the Country was up in Arms in pursuit of him, but it's supposed he is gone Northwards. If the Laws were more severe on the Harbourers of known Highwaymen, this desperate Fellow could not have escaped so long.

We hear that a Royal Proclamation, with a Reward of £200, will be issued for the apprehending and taking of Turpin, the famous Robber and Murderer.

LONDON EVENING POST, Thursday 5-Saturday 7 May 1737

Port to Port

Why Dick went to Amsterdam is no real mystery - then as now, those who had made Britain too hot for themselves found the air a little cooler on the other side of the Channel. His former associates in the Essex Gang, the ringleader Sam Gregory and his brother Jerry, had been attempting to get to Boulogne when they were captured on the road.

What Dick did in Holland - friendless, poor, without a word of Dutch - we'll never know. It was at the time perhaps the most truly cosmopolitan of Europe's cities, vibrant with trade - trade both authorised and unauthorised. Smuggling flourished there, and I suspect that after five years of criminal activity Dick had become too enmeshed in the habits of the criminal world to remember how to live a 'normal' life again.

Whatever precipitated his return, in February 1737 he took a passage to Harwich and within a month was back in London with two new croneys, making the suburbs dangerous for anyone with jingly pockets.

Amsterdamnation

When things got too hot for him in London, round about Christmas 1735, Dick headed for Holland. Amsterdam, to be precise.

Normal Service...

... is now resumed.

It's been a bit of a funny old week, that's seen me to-ing, fro-ing and sometimes jumping up and down on the spot. All of which activity has kept me from the computer. But I'm back now - and it's personal.

One of the events of my week was sorting out a niggling health scare that turned out to be nothing of anything very important. Just a sign of AGE...

But the worry and the subsequent relief did make me sit up and consider mortality face to face as it were, for a time.

I was left with this thought: I'm 34. Dick never made it that far - he was a few months short of his 34th birthday when he was turned off the gallows.

I did never climbe

Parnassus Hill

To tread the Muses' Mazes

And Shooter's Hill was fitter farre for me.

John Clavell, pardonned Highwayman (1601-1643)

R.I.P

Lock, Stock...

Sorry for the silence, guys - I've been a bit busy with my new Ebay purchase...

Traditional Pillory


Heavy Duty Design

Will last years


Finished in Dark Wood


Quick &Easily Assembled / Disassembled
Dimensions
height 150cm
width 110cm


This item will be shipped in two packages due to the weight of the item.
Feet included - not shown on the picture

Turpin TM

Recently two little birds suggested that our man Dick was not born a Turpin. It was a nickname, they reasoned, bestowed on him because the amalgam of its meanings seemed to sum him up - a foul-mouthed, violent, frequently injured, fast-running, soldierly, fearful, gold-loving man.

The truth is stranger even than that, and will make sense to any of you marvelling at the huge number of Dick Turpin pubs, inns and other hostelries liberally sprinkled around the UK, often in counties not readily associated with him.

The name 'Turpin' was a franchise.

There were actually dozens of Dick Turpins, due to the law of supply and demand. As Reid's Weekly Journal commented on 14 May 1737:

"On Tuesday a single highwayman robbed four coaches and several passengers at different times on Hounslow Heath and they gave out it was Turpin, but that fellow having done so much mischief of late runs in everybody's head."

Everyone was talking - and often singing, too - about Turpin. There was no point in being held up by anyone else. Give a small sum to Turpin, and it was free drinks from your friends and a story you could dine out on for a month. He was the Real Thing.

Who would admit to being held up by anyone less? Who would with a straight face declare that they'd handed over their third-best snuffbox to some nameless, fameless highwaybod? No; it was Turpin and none other.

And so, due to the huge requirement for Turpin's services, a clever wag in the London Underworld came up with the Turpin scam: for a small sum, you bought the rights to trade under the name of Turpin along a given stretch of highway on the London periphery. As it became more and more popular, regional Turpins were also appointed.

No one man could have managed it: not only is it impossible to be in so many places at once, no horse could run under the weight of so much loot.

It was a sweet deal. The Turpins pooled the cash, divided it equally, and were all happy men. Many of them had secret passages dug in suburban villages between the tavern and the church - even, sometimes, directly to the bed-chamber of the lady of the manor - and hid spare guns and horses up and down the country.

Sadly, when one of the Northern Dicks got himself hanged for horse-stealing it spoiled the game for the rest of them, who all took to innkeeping to support their old age, which is why there are so many Turpin-related pubs still trading today.

Family Pride

If genealogy websites are to be believed, before the Norman conquest, the Turpin family resided in the town of Turpin au Boas in France. After 1066, when William granted them lands in Dorset, they settled in Britain.

The family were armigers, bearing a family crest. You can purchase it online printed onto almost anything you might imagine...

Only In America, People. Only.

I think, having visited a number of online family-crest vendors now, that the arms above belong to the Irish/British Turpins, while the crest below belonged to the French branch of the family, but I am sure John could design something more appropriate. Who knows, in time you may be able to clothe your pets from this site too...

Monsieur Turpin

Francois Henri Turpin was born in Caen, France in 1709 and died, possibly in Paris, in 1799. So he was a contemporary of Mr. Richard Turpin.

He was a professor at the University of Caen, then moved to Paris, as so many did in the 18th century, to seek his fortune. He spent his days philosophising with the likes of Claude Helvetius, himself a man of letters, mathematics and philosophy enjoying an allowance of 100,000 crowns a year from the Queen of France. Francois Turpin was not so lucky and "he was only enabled with difficulty to earn a livelyhood by putting his pen at the service of the booksellers".


Claude Adrien Helvetius - a man of the Enlightenment and wigs

His most famous essay was La France illustre, ou Le Plutarque Francais but its critics were harsh and claimed Turpin was "ni Plutarque ni Francais" - so, not a very good writer then.


source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. 1926
appologies to French speakers, this software doesn't seem to support accents, or if it does I haven't found them. Francois should have a cedilla on the c, as should Francais, and Helvetius has an accute on the second e.

More Dirty Talk

turpido, a nastily wounded place.

turpiloquium, foul (obscene) language.

turpilucrus, basely covetous of gain.

turpio, a base (dishonourable) fellow.

turpitudo = PVDENDA (hinder parts).

A Glossary of Later Latin, comp. Alexander Souter (1949)

So, if we put them all together à la Daphne, we have: a foul-mouthed cove sporting an injury or two, still hankering after loot and ladies.

Sound about right?

Turpin of Reims

Turpin, the 8th century warlike archbishop of Reims, was for many years regarded as the author of the legendary Historia de vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi:



Charles the Great taking a bath, in his wonderful boat-shaped bath and in his robes and crown because he was, after all, King of France

But this great historic work has been declared a fiction [cf: Black Bess, Da Vinci Code etc.] and ascribed to a Monk in Compostella who is considered to have written the first five chapters in the 11th century [the rest of the work being completed by another monk, this time in Vienne, between 1109 and 1119].

However Turpin, archbishop of Reims is probably one and the same person as Tilpin, archbishop of Reims 753AD to 800AD - handwriting wasn't always easy to read in those days, even if you could read.


the cathedral at Reims

According to Flodoard, Charles Martel drove Rigobert [archbishop of Reims] from his office and replaced him with an upstart warrior clerk going by the name of Milo, who was bishop of Trier at the time, and became archbishop of Reims in 717. Milo, being aggressive, then set about the good people of Vascones in a military way. So it is generally thought that the warlike legends surrounding Turpin, archbishop of Reims, are due to confusion with his aggressive predecessor: Milo. Lot of confusion going on in the 8th century, which is probably why it was called: The Dark Ages.

Tilpin on the other hand was a monk from St Denis [the Westminster Abbey of France] before he was made archbishop of Reims in 753, and is now known to have spend his appointment clearing up the mess left by Milo, re-establishing the revenues and prestige of his church, and going down in history as being called Turpin.

see also: Turpini historia Karoli magni et Rotholandi, F. Castets [Paris 1880], the History of Charles the Great and Orlando, ascribed to Turpin, T. Rodd [London 1812] and De pseudo-Turpino, G. Paris [Paris 1865]

source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. 1926

Them's fightin' words

turpin n.m. (1204, R. de Moil; orig. obsc.) Sorte de soldat: Cloistriers ont lor robe escourtee; Escuiier sanlent et turpin (R. de Moil.).

LAROUSSE DICTIONNAIRE de l'ancien français

(ed. A.J. Greimas, 1995)

turpiculus a. ugly, little, slightly indecent

turpificatus a. debased

turpilucricupidus a. fond of filthy lucre.

turpis a. ugly, deformed, unsightly; base, disgraceful.

turpiter ad. repulsively; shamefully.

turpitudo deformity; disgrace, infamy.

Collins Latin Dictionary, D.A.Kidd MA 1957

Filthy Language

turpeyl, var. TIRPEIL Obs., fear.

turph, -y, obs. ff. TURF, TURFY.

'turpid a. rare [irreg. f. L. turp-is ugly, unsightly, foul, disgraceful + ID, after torpid, etc.] Base, filthy, worthless. Hence 'turpidly adv

'turpie, a. Obs. rare [f. L. turpi-s in quot. after the L. phrase turpe lucrum (see FILTHY a. 4b).] Filthy.

'turpify, v. rare [ad. L. turpificare (recorded only in pa. pple. turpificatus) to make filthy, foul, or bad, f. L. turpi-s + ficare: see prec. and -FY] trans. To make foul or filthy; to befoul, besmirch.

turpin. Obs. rare. A fanciful name for, or appellation of, the hare.

from The Oxford English Dictionary

Depravity and Purgatives

turpeth, (tur/pith), n. the root of a convolvulaceous plant, Operculina turpethum, formerly used as a purgative.

Turpin, (tur/pin) n. Richard (Dick), 1706-1739 English highwayman.

turpitude,(tur/pi tyood), n. vile, shameful or base of character; depravity.

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, The Unabridged Edition [1966]

This little Wiggy...

In the 18th Century the choice of wig for chaps was between the perruke (left), the tie-wig (middle) and the bob-wig (right), all of which could be made in any colour of hair from black to grey.

As the century progressed shorter, more natural-looking wigs predominated, but earlier in the 1700s the wigs were large, curly and grand, as the portrait of Voltaire below amply demonstrates.

Bob-wigs were worn by professional men, citizens, and even apprentices; lawyers sported a high frontlet and a long bag at the back tied in the middle, undergraduates a wig with a flat top to allow for the academic cap.

Below Denis Diderot (aka, Mr. Encyclopedia) is modelling a subtle little number:

Where Hogarth and Chardin (see yesterday's post) bravely flaunted convention by depicting themselves unwigged, their stubbly skulls draped intimately in soft furnishings (not, Mr. Coombes, lady-bedcaps, as you suggested), tonight we go a step further in the strip-tease.

I give you the naked cranium of Denis Diderot, flaunting the protrusion of his frontal lobes for all to see:

What a man!

Hatless and fancy-free

In the matter of hats, one thing has not yet been addressed: that, beneath all those hats - tricorn, bicorn or just plain floppy - your average gentleman would have been sporting a wig.

Wigs are a fascinating subject and deserve a number of posts to themselves. If fashion is a language, the 18th century developed an entire semiotics of wigs.

If you were poor or a child, however, you wore your own hair, which was a statement in itself. As we can see, the lad in Chardin's The Governess below has had his hair combed into the same style as the wig his papa would be sporting. (Note, by the way, the lovely detail of the hat, a particularly fine silver-ribbon trimmed tricorn):

But what, pray, lay beneath the wig?

Well, most gentlemen would shudder at the thought of revealing that to anyone but his intimate family and his dressing-table mirror, but artists are hardy souls, always pushing the envelope (for artists who POST the envelope, see John Coombes Unstuck Diaries).

Below we can see William Hogarth and Jean Simeon Chardin, contemporaries across the Channel. Their skulls are shaved, but they are at home.

Feeling relaxed.

The wig...

... is off.

They want to disturb cosy conventionality.

So they invite us, the viewer, into their private world, their wigless intimacy.

Hogarth, padding about the house with his pug for company, appears to have sported a soft velvety beret arrangement.

Chardin did not paint himself until he was 72. When he did, he decided to show himself unbolstered by brocade, wig, and expensive fripperies. He is wearing his glasses, soft comfortable clothing and a cotton headscarf bound with a ribbon, and, sometimes, a draughtsman's eyeshade. Stripped of his defences, he is ready to work.

And the honesty of these portraits, the nakedness of these men without hats or wigs, the bald, vulnerable humanity of them, stares timelessly at us down through the centuries.