BOTANY BAY ARGOT

AMANDA LAUGESEN

The English and Irish convicts cast on the ‘fatal shore’ of Australia brought with them the cant of the criminal underworld. In the colonies, this brutal and depraved class continued to speak this ‘language’, allowing them to defy authority and continue their criminal ways. Or so many colonial commentators believed.

Watkin Tench, officer in the marines, commented not long after the arrival of the First Fleet, on the fact that the convicts were marked by their use ‘of what is called the flash, or kiddy language’, an ‘unnatural jargon’ that needed to be abolished in order to achieve reformation. The ‘infatuating cant’, he believed, was ‘more deeply associated with depravity, and continuance in vice, than is generally supposed’. Tench reflected the views of the British elite of the eighteenth century, who associated the lower classes with criminality, and despite their concern with reformation exhibited a voyeuristic fascination with the habits and culture of the so-called criminal class.

This British fascination with underworld language dated back centuries but was especially strong from the seventeenth century. In 1699, the first separate dictionary of underworld slang was published, A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, In Its several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggars, Thieves, Cheats, &c. Further editions of this, and numerous others appeared throughout the eighteenth century, and were widely circulated in England. Such dictionaries helped to establish an understanding of a distinct criminal underclass with its own peculiar language and culture—an understanding that carried over into the Australian colonies.

It is worth examining a couple of aspects of the history of the colonial ‘convict cant’. To at least some extent, some convicts brought with them slang words from the London underworld. Some terms continued to be current in the colonies, took on new meanings and were added to the Australian English lexicon. New cant words were also formed in the colonies. An interesting feature of convict language in the colonies was a tendency to invert the meanings of words—many words came to be used with an ironic twist in the colonies, a language for a ‘world turned upside down’.

James Hardy Vaux, a convict, compiled an early collection of the ‘flash language’, similar to the earlier British compilation. It was designed for a magistrate, Thomas Skottowe, to whom the glossary was dedicated, so that the magistrate could better understand the convicts brought before him. Vaux’s 1812 vocabulary contained many words of the London underworld. For a number of words there is no evidence of their being used in the colonies, although given the nature of the records for the first decades of Australian settlement, it is possible that they simply weren’t recorded. Some of the more colourful terms include: cly-faker for ‘a pickpocket’, joskin for ‘a country bumpkin’, spice gloak for ‘a footpad robber’, and phrases such as  Oliver is in town, explained by Vaux as being ‘a phrase signifying that the nights are moonlight, and consequently unfavourable to depredation’. Obviously some terms were particular to life back in Britain, such as dub at a knapping jigger, ‘a person who collected tolls at turnpike gates’, and would not have had any currency in the new world of the Australian colonies.

Some of Vaux’s terms were quite particular to the convict experience: lag is recorded in Vaux as both a noun, ‘a convict under sentence of transportation’, and a verb, ‘to transport for seven years or upwards’. Lag and bellowser, ‘a man transported for his natural life’, had obvious relevance in the colonies. Scrag meaning ‘to hang on the gallows’ also can be traced in the colonies. A term like double-slangs, defined by Vaux as meaning ‘double-irons’ probably had currency in the colonies, even if we have no evidence for it.

An 1832 poem in the magazine Hill’s Life played on the cant language, writing from the point of view of a repentant criminal looking back on his experiences:

Such thoughts as these, for years gone past,

Oft on my fancy burst…

I think on ‘Moulsey Hurst,’ [a place in Britain where fights were held]

And all the sporting coves then there,

And all the risques I ran

Of lagging, scragging, and so forth

To be a swell-mob-man.

The swell mob (criminals whose dress reflected the success of their crimes) was alluded to by colonial commentators who feared the continuing existence of a criminal class in the colonies. James Mudie, a large property owner and fierce enemy of the convicts, was keen to attack transportation as bringing to the colonies ever more numbers of ‘desperate and practised burglars, habitual and experienced receivers of stolen goods, artful and designing swindlers … and a sprinkling of all sorts of the villains denominated the swell-mob’.

Certainly, a criminal element persisted in the colonies, and continued to use a criminal language to mark themselves as a type of community. Using such language could be a way of defying authority and exerting a common convict identity. Joy Damousi, a historian who has examined the way convict women defied government administration, has argued this. Convict women might sing songs that employed cant language and mocked the authorities. The authorities seem to have been fairly well acquainted with this language and probably had some idea what the convicts were saying, yet perhaps it served an important psychological function.

Closed convict communities, such as the female factories and places of secondary punishment such as Norfolk Island and Port Arthur, probably allowed for a greater perpetuation of convict cant. Thomas Rodgers, a visiting missionary to Norfolk Island, made numerous observations on the use of ‘flash language’, and noted that when the commandant, a former convict himself, used this ‘low burglar dialect’ to them, he was met only with ‘derision and contempt’.

Another religious visitor to the convict establishments was William Ullathorne. He noted the inversion of meanings that convicts sometimes applied to standard words:

I was very much struck with the peculiar language used by the convicts at Norfolk Island. When a prisoner has been conversing with me respecting another individual, he has designated him as a good man. I suspected that he did not mean what he said, and on asking an explanation, he has apologised, and said, that it was the habitual language of the place, and that a bad man was called a good man; and that a man who was ready to perform his duty was generally called a bad man. There is quite a vocabulary of terms of that kind, which seems to have been invented to adapt themselves to the complete subversion of the human heart which I found subsisting.

While Ullathorne viewed such language as indicative of the convicts’ incorrigibility, it was perhaps also a way of convicts inverting words often used to stigmatise them, and applying their own sense of morality or justice, and internal hierarchy of behaviour, to the situation. For example, in Van Diemen’s Land’s penal settlements, Governor John Franklin was very fond of addressing the convicts and telling them that they were ‘bad’ people. He intended to make them feel ashamed of themselves—but they might have found his admonitions more amusing than shame-inducing.

A similar inversion of meaning noted by Peter Cunningham and James O’Connell was the ironic use of legitimate and illegitimate. Legitimates as defined by Cunningham were those who had ‘legal’ reasons for coming to the colonies (i.e. convicts who had been sentenced to transportation), while illegitimates were those ‘free from that stigma’ (for example free settlers). O’Connell observed that legitimacy, ‘in all other parts of the world a coveted qualification’ was in New South Wales ‘a term of reproach’.

The term flash itself is worthy of examination. Flash in the sense of the language probably derived from the sense of flash defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘gaudy, showy, smart. Of persons: Dashing, ostentatious, swaggering, “swell” ’. Flash was the language of the flash-men, but it was also known as St-Giles’ Greek, Billingsgate or Newgate slang, and the kiddy language. The former labels referred to the (perceived) geographic origins of the cant. Kiddy was ‘a thief of the lower order, who … dresses in the extreme of vulgar gentility, and affects a knowingness in his air and conversation’.

The term flash-man, defined by Vaux as ‘a pimp’, was used widely in the colonies with a broader meaning, describing bushrangers as well as urban criminals, and often referring to their tendency to be ‘flashily dressed’. John West described the Van Diemen’s Land bushrangers as  ‘ “flash” robbers’ but probably referred more to their membership of the criminal community than any flash dressing. The meanings of ‘flash’ in the sense of ‘the criminal fraternity’, ‘flash’ in the sense of ‘flash dressing’ and ‘flash’ in the sense of being ‘in the know’ or being ‘fly’ all had currency in the world of criminals and bushrangers. Often the flash men appear to be the most experienced of any criminal group. The Report from the Select Committee on Penal Discipline in 1856, for example, observed that the ‘flash-men’ among the prisoners had been plotting something, and had been directing the ‘crawlers’ to work for them.

Crawler seems to be a cant word that had its origins in the colonies, possibly among convicts. While the above reference seems to allude to the ‘sycophantic’ sense of crawler (i.e. ‘a person who “crawls up” to others, seeking favours’), it was often used among the convicts themselves for people who couldn’t work, and was thus similar to another Australian sense of crawler ‘a slow-moving animal, usually one enfeebled by age or disease’. This sense was recorded in reference to convicts in 1838: ‘The cant name for these among the prisoners themselves was “the crawlers”. They were scarcely able to work, people whom no settlers wished to employ.’

Some commentators seemed more concerned with swearing, a more relevant form of defiance by convicts in the open prison of the colonies. Convicts out on assignment were often accused of employing abusive language against their masters, using words such as bugger and bloody, rarely recorded in ‘respectable sources’ but turning up in transcripts of court cases. Indeed, it was indicative of the nature of power in the colonies that convicts could be charged for using ‘foul’ language. As in the military (the first type of administration established in New South Wales), insubordination was a serious offence and threatened to undermine the social hierarchy.

Despite the attempts of commentators to keep convicts and ex-convicts beyond the pale of respectable society, former convicts became important contributors to the development of the colonies and entered respectable society. Convict cant was thus unlikely to be employed by many of these former convicts. Some convict words took on broader meanings in the colonies, with no stigma attached to them.

Cove, ‘a man, a bloke, a chap’, has had a long history in Australian English. Gammon, defined by Vaux as ‘flattery; deceit; pretence’ was picked up in Australian pidgin and then continued on in Aboriginal English meaning ‘nonsense, rubbish’. Trap for a policeman, recorded by Vaux, entered Australian English beyond its cant usage and has been current in Australian English through to the twentieth century.

Many convicts sent out to work on rural properties or on roads were far less likely to employ words relevant to the underworld environment of London. Thus some cant words changed meaning as they entered Australian English. Swag, defined by Vaux as ‘a term used in speaking of any booty you have lately obtained, be it of what kind it may’ was transformed in the Australian colonies to mean, in the Australian National Dictionary definition, ‘the collection of possessions and daily necessaries carried by one travelling, usually on foot, in the bush; especially the blanket-wrapped roll carried, usually on the back or across the shoulders, by an itinerant worker’ from 1841, and specifically as ‘a bed-roll’ from 1865. There were, of course, a number of terms that derived from swag, including swag as a verb,  swagger and swaggie who was the same as a swagman, and swagwoman.

Another slang term duffer was adapted to life in the Australian colonies. First recorded in 1756 as meaning ‘one who sells trashy goods as valuable, upon false pretences’, it is often used in senses that suggest counterfeiting; as a verb duff means ‘to dress or manipulate (a thing) fraudulently’ and was thus used in Australia in the sense of altering the brands on (stolen) cattle. A cattle duffer was someone who stole cattle and would often alter the brand mark. In 1849 Bell’s Life in Sydney wrote: ‘ “Duffers”, a title as expressive as could be found for those who live on the thick Fat of the land by cattle stealing.’

Few cant words survived for long in general Australian English, except for those that gained broader meanings and within the literary convict world of the historical novel. Yet a fascination with an underworld language continued. Marcus Clarke, in his ‘Sketches of Melbourne Low Life’ recorded long passages of Melbourne underworld slang:

A friend who watches while his ‘pals’ escape from prison is called a phillipe, to steal is to pinch, to poll is to rob an accomplice, a ramp is a burglar, stealing linen is snow-dropping, to cry ‘shoe leather!’ is to give warning; the broth given on board the hulks is called skilligolee, skilly, and smiggins; to be hanged is to be topped, tucked up, turned up, stretched.

Marcus Clarke employed much of this language in his popular historical novel of convict life For the Term of His Natural Life. A general fascination with not just the historical convict period, but with the criminal underworld persists and is reflected in popular culture. The distinct language that exists within prisons has been documented in Gary Simes’ A Dictionary of Australian Underworld Slang (1993), while convict Australia was documented in the Robert Hughes’ bestseller of 1986, evocatively titled The Fatal Shore. My attempt to capture some of the elusive ‘Botany Bay Argot’ is a contribution to understanding the world of the convicts.

[Dr Laugesen is a researcher at the Australian National Dictionary Centre. Her book Convict Words: Language in Early Colonial Australia will be published by Oxford University Press at the end of this year.]