Green’s Dictionary of Slang

canting crew n.

[cant v.1 (1) + crew n. (1). The ‘official’ canting crew, as delineated by Grose, encompassed 23 orders. Men (in descending order of status): ruffler n.; upright man n.; hooker n.1 (1) or angler n. (1); rogue n..; wild rogue under wild adj.; prigger of prancers under prigger n.1 ; palliard n. (1); frater n.; jarkman n. or patrico n.; freshwater mariner under freshwater adj. or whip-jack under whip v.1 ; dommerer n.; drunken tinker n.; swadder n.; abram n. Women: demander for glimmer n.; bawdy-basket under bawdy adj.; mort n.1 ; autem mort under autem adj.; walking mort under walking adj.; doxy n. (1); dell n. (1); kinchin mort under kinchin n. However, such lists vary, e.g. that in the New Canting Dict. (1725) runs to 64 ‘job descriptions’]

the world of professional thieves and criminal mendicants.

Show quotations
F. Kirkman Unlucky Citizen 135: f I had hapned among Beggars or Gypsies. I had been like enough to have made one of the Canting-Crew.
[UK]B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.
[UK] in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy VI 42: And ever since I do abhor the canting Crew.
[UK]Kiss my A-se is no Treason n.p.: ’Twas a Bargain very plain, Sold by the Canting Crew.
, , , [UK]Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
, , [UK]Grose 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.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK] ‘The Song of the Young Prig’ in C. Hindley James Catnach (1878) 171: My mother she dwelt in Dyot’s Isle, / One of the canting crew, sirs.
[UK](con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 163: All the shades and grades of the Canting Crew, were assembled.
[UK]F.W. Carew 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.