canting crew n.
the world of professional thieves and criminal mendicants.
Dict. Canting Crew. | ||
in Pills to Purge Melancholy VI 42: And ever since I do abhor the canting Crew. | ||
Kiss my A-se is no Treason n.p.: ’Twas a Bargain very plain, Sold by the Canting Crew. | ||
, , , | Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. | |
, , | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Stop hole abbey. The nick name of the chief rendezvous of the canting crew of beggars, gypsies, cheats, thieves, &c. &c. | |
Lex. Balatronicum. | ||
‘The Song of the Young Prig’ in James Catnach (1878) 171: My mother she dwelt in Dyot’s Isle, / One of the canting crew, sirs. | ||
(con. 1737–9) Rookwood (1857) 163: All the shades and grades of the Canting Crew, were assembled. | ||
Autobiog. of a Gipsey 322: Here were the broadsmen and the ‘bonnets’: the thimble-engro [...] the one-legged sailor, and the rest of the canting crew. |