shoful, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

shoful n.

also schoful, shofel, shofell, shofle, showful, show-full

[Ger. thence Yid. schofel, worthless stuff, rubbish; ult. the Ger.-Jewish pron. of Heb. shāphāl, low; sense 2: although Hotten (1864) and Ware spec. define showfull/shofel as a ‘Hansom cab’ (the name had been patented in 1834) it may be a different word (or their mis-reading of the term) since such cabs were the ‘legitimate’ vehicle of which sense 5 is the counterfeit; Dickens defines it as ‘a hackney cab’ in 1853, but offers nothing as to its ‘legitimacy’; N&Q (p. 60/1 16/7/1864) suggests the 'shovel;' shape of the Hansom]

1. a low tavern.

1853		Household Wds 24 Sept. 76/2: .
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 259/1: The Three Queens (a beer shop.) ‘A rackety place, sir,’ said one man, ‘one of the showfuls.’.

2. a Hansom cab.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 213: showfull, or shofell a Hansom cab, ― said to have been from the name of the inventor.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor II 488/2: I don’t think those ‘shofuls’ (Hansoms) should be allowed – the fact is, if the driver is not a tall man he can’t see his horse’s head.
1863		Bucks Herald 24 Oct. 4/6: He calls a Hansom a ‘shofle,’ and his own vehicle is known as a ‘growler’.
1880		Northampton Mercury (Northants) 18 Sept. 4/2: [advt] Hansom or Shoful Cab, by Mulliner, For Sale.
1885		Globe 29 Dec. 6/2: ‘I remember the time when I used to do ten bob a day regular with my shoful. I don’t make five now’.
1894		Lancs. Eve. Post 17 May 2/6: ‘Mush’ is the cabby language for a small master who only owns his own, or at most two or three ‘shofuls.’ ‘Shoful’ is cabby language for a hansom cab.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 73: Shoful, [...] a hansom cab.
1903		Illus. Sporting & Dramatic News 21 Nov. 10/3: The steed which has become to slow for a ‘sho’ful,’ as the hansom is termed [...] has to come down to ‘growler’ work.
1913		Sheffield Eve, News 3 Apr. 4/5: The vehicle invented by Hansom had the driver’s seat in front, whereas in the shoful the modern hansom cab [...] the driver’s seat is behind.

3. counterfeit coins, sham jewellery.

1828		Proceedings Old Bailey 1827–28 602/2: The twenty counterfeit shillings were found on me; the sister came to me and asked if I had any shofle about me, if I had to put it away.
1830		Birmingham Jrnl 10 July 3/4: Witness there told him that had been unexpectedly disappointed of getting some shofall, (base money).
1839		W.A. Miles Poverty, Mendicity and Crime; Report 155: Itinerant umbrella makers [...] pass shofell, i.e. bad money.
1844		New Sprees of London 34: [H]e requested a gross of half-crowns, (schofels,) [...] and D— departed into an adjoining room to fetch the schofels.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 92: show-full, or schoful, bad money.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 24/1: Showfulls ... Bad money.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. show-full, or schoful, bad money. Also, mock jewellery.
1874		Eclectic Mag. 82 732/1: The Jewish doctors of the Middle Ages, the money-dealers, brokers, pedlars, and old-clothesmen since, have only left in our streets a few such terms as shoful, or show-full, bad money or sham jewellery (Hebrew, shafal, low, base).
1883		N. Devon Jrnl 8 Feb. 7/2: [from The Echo] From the Hebrew shoful, for base coin.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 8: Sheen - Bad money. Also, Sinker, Schofel.
1888		P.H. Fitzgerald Chron. of Bow Street 118: He knew that Coleman was ‘making the showful,’ as it was called in the slang, but could not discover where he lived.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 417: Palmer got down and heaved the sackful o’ shoful into the river.
1895		H. Ellis Criminal 163: From Scotland we borrow duds for clothes, and from the Hebrew shoful for base coin.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 70: Schofel, bad money [ibid.] 73: Shoful, bad or counterfeit money.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

4. a humbug, an impostor.

1853		Illus. London Mag. Dec. 262/1: [He] requested to know whether Mr. L. considered himself to be a gentleman; adding his own personal conviction that he was not, but rather a ‘sweep,’ a ‘duffer,’ a ‘shoful,’ and a ‘moucher’.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1871		Melbourne Punch 9 Nov. 145/1: Young Shoful (a rising bookmaker). — ‘If I vasn’t lagged like you, I knows how to make a book’.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1883		P.H. Fitzgerald recreations of a Literary Man 299: A bona fide old Street Chanter, now dead, and probably the Last of his Race (for the present degenerate specimens, together with their ware, are, in their own phraseology, ‘Shoful’).

5. a cab other than that patented by Hansom.

1853		G.A. Sala ‘Slang’ in Household Words 24 Sept. 76/1: A hackney cab is a shoful.
1860		Baily’s Mag. July 254: What I means, miss, is, that I has my reg’lars out of the shofle; them’s the terms that the guv'nor and me has always done business on.
1860		Shoreditch Obs. (London) 7 Jan. 3/5: The lady in the ‘shoful’ arrived and sprung out, [...] seized her spouse [...] pushed him into the ‘shoful’ and got in after him.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 351/1: ‘Showfull,’ in slang means counterfeit, and the ‘showfull’ cabs are an infringement on Hansom’s patent.
1864		St. James’ Mag. Apr. 13: Silvester Langdale asked what a "shoful" was [...] ‘Shoful means a street cab, sir’.
c.1868		‘Cabmen and Their New Flags’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 153: And all the shofle shofles they will be rejected.
1879		London Life 24 May 7/2: We can only add that as the Prince spoke out so fairly and Hansom-ly that cabmen for the future will neither prove Growlers or Shofuls.
1885		A. Griffiths Fast and Loose III 142: You had better be on the box of the ‘shoful’, and, when he comes to you, drive off.
1890		Sporting Times 8 Feb. 6/1: He became aware that he was being shadowed by a cabman, said cabman being only a few yards behind him, and leading a grey steed of sober aspect, attached to what is professionally known as a ‘shoful’.
1899		‘Pot’ & ‘Swears’ Scarlet City 177: I found Anthony enconced in what he called a ‘spicy showful’.
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 33: Around the corner and adown the dreary vista of the Vauxhall Bridge Road sped the hapless ‘shoful’.
1912		E. Pugh City Of The World 272: Then you stoop down [...] collar the wrong portmanter, innocent, and toddle away with it to the cab-rank and have a shoful out o’ the station in style.

In compounds

shoful-man (n.)

one who passes counterfeit money.

1856		H. Mayhew Great World of London II 89: The ‘Shofulman’ plunders by counterfeits—as the coiner.
1861		H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor IV 26: ‘shoful men,’ or those who plunder by means or counterfeits.
1861		Old Roman Well I 113: He has been a ‘shoful man,’ and a ‘smasher,’ and a race-course flat-catcher.
1866		London Misc. 57: He used to be a shoful man once — dealt in bad money.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 7: Schofulmen - Forgers, utterers of false coin.

shoful-pitcher (n.) (also schofel-pitcher, schoffel-pitcher, shovel-pitcher, showfull-pitcher, showful-pitcher) [pitcher n.² (1)]

a distributor of counterfeit money; thus shoful-pitching, passing counterfeit money.

1836		‘The Bastard’s Christening’ in Comic Songster and Gentleman’s Private Cabinet 12: There vos leery Joe, the flue faker, / Who’d just left the Stone Pitcher; [...] And Bob the schofel gritcher [sic].
1844		New Sprees of London 21: [The] infamous Cadgers' Palace, the daily and nightly resort of the most daring cracksmen, dragsmen, schofel pitchers, grigs, pulletts, beggars, and impostors of every grade.
1850		Ragged School Mag. Dec. 293: Here I got acquainted with several daring thieves, and shofle pitchers, (passers of bad coin,) cracksmen, (housebreakers,) and others.
1850		Fast Man 15:1 n.p.: ‘What game are you trying to play? Are you really schoffel-pitchers [...] This is a bad counterfeit half-a-crown’.
1856		G.L. Chesterton Revelations Prison Life I 136: The names given to the plunderers of society appear to be of endless variety—vagrants, divided into cadgers and high -flyers; showful-pitchers; smashers.
1857		‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue 39: Schofel pitchers work the bulls and gypsies make and plant the gammy-lowr swags.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 92: SHOWFULL-PITCHER, a passer of counterfeit money. [...] SHOWFULL-PITCHING, passing bad money.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 76: schofel-pitchers Passers of bad money.
1862		Birmingham Dly Post 26 Dec. 3/4: I had heard the ‘shoful pitchers’ (passers of bad coin) tell to each other [...] the horrors of transportation.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 62/2: Here were ‘cracksmen,’ ‘magsmen,’ ‘showful pitchers,’ ‘guns’ and thieves of every denomination.
1873		Sl. Dict. 287: Shoful-pitcher a passer of bad money. shoful-pitching, passing bad money. ‘Snide-pitcher’ and ‘Snide-pitching’ are terms exchangeable with the preceding.
1882		‘Some Varieties of Thieves’ in Star (London) 23 Feb. 4/2: An accomplished magsman [...] would never hope to succeed as a [...] snide or shoful-pitcher, or passer of bad money.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. 9/1: Schofel pitchers are working the bulls now. Coiners are passing off bad crown pieces now.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 17: Shoful-pitching, fawney-rigging and the thousand and one ingenious devices whereby the impecunious endeavour to augment balances at their bankers.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 73: Shoful, bad or counterfeit money.
1901		Argus (Melbourne) 20 Sept. 6/4: The man who utters it [...] may be either a boodle carrier, a snide-pitcher, or a shovel-pitcher while the operation itself is to pitch or to shove queer.

shoful-pullet (n.) [pullet n. (1)]

a prostitute, esp. a spurious ‘virgin’ prostitute, whose maidenhead is miraculously renewed for each new client.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 230: showfull pullet, a ‘gay’ or unsteady woman.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 7: Shoful Pullet - A bad or unsteady woman (young).
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. [as 1882].

In phrases

draw shoful (v.)

(UK und.) to make counterfeit notes or coins.

1923

J.C. Goodwin ‘Criminal Sl.’ in Sidelights on Criminal Matters 165: [H]e was collared for drawing shoful and chewed bull for a seven stretch.