Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a spendthrift, a wastrel.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Fork is often Rakes Heir, or after a scraping Father comes a scattering Son.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. n.p.: A fork is also used for a Spendthrift.

2. (UK Und.; 1940s US) a pickpocket.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 206: Fork, a pickpocket.
1725		New Canting Dict.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 30: Fork, a pickpocket.
1947		R.H. Rovere Howe & Hummel 42: Howe was very proud of his younger partner’s ability as a fork. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange?’ he once asked his Boswell on the Herald. ‘Abie and I [. . . .] place our bets together and stay together most of the afternoon. Yet often, on the way back, I have no money at all and Abie has a thick roll. Honestly, sir, I don’t know how he does it’.

3. (orig. UK; US black) usu. in pl., the fingers, esp. the middle and forefingers.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 242: forks the two fore-fingers of the hand; to put your forks down, is to pick a pocket.
1821		D. Haggart Autobiog. 12: The keek cloy is easily picked. If the notes are in the long fold, just tip them the forks; but if there is a purse or open money in the case, you must link it.
1830		W.T. Moncrieff Heart of London II i: Such fine forks as you have for frisking a cly.
1841		Tait’s Edinburgh Mag. VIII 220: My forks were light and fly, and lightly faked away [F&H].
1845		G.W.M. Reynolds Mysteries of London vol. 2 142: Forks Fingers.
1848		Ladies’ Repository (N.Y.) Oct. VIII:37 316/1: Forks, fingers.
1852		Kendal Mercury 17 Apr. 6/1: For cleaning out clys his forks they vas made.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1863		Criminal Life (Boston) 19 Dec. n.p.: Morse [...] is afflicted by nature, with elongated forks, which have an inclination to insert themselves into everthing [sic] accessible, from a pocket to a till.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 118/2: I instantly drew out my ‘forks,’ and in doing so got entangled in the fringe of her shawl.
1873		Sl. Dict. 168: Forks, or grappling irons fingers. Costermongers and other clumsy feeders have a proverb which seems to justify their taking bones and choice morsels in their hands during the progress of a meal. It is, ‘Fingers were the first forks;’ sometimes varied to ‘Fingers were made before forks.’.
1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890).
1881		Newcastle Courant 2 Sept. 6/5: He dropped his forks into the pockets of his fellow travellers.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 30: Forks, the hands (pugilistic).
1897		C. Whibley ‘The Switcher’ A Book of Scoundrels 210: ‘My forks,’ he boasted, ‘are equally long, and they never fail me.’.
1908		N.Y. Times 23 Sept. in Fleming Unforgettable Season (1981) 242: Leaving you with your dexter fork extended in the air.
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 4: Forks: Fingers.
1938		F.D. Sharpe Sharpe of the Flying Squad 330: forks : Fingers.
1944		‘Jiver’s Bible’ in D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive.
1958		F. Norman in Sun. Graphic 23 Nov. in Norman’s London (1969) 39: He might therefore stick his fork into some unsuspecting guest’s outer.
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 184: Forks Fingers.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak.
1996		Eble Sl. and Sociability 81: Metaphors include forks ‘fingers’ lemon ‘light-skinned black woman’ and piano ‘section of spare ribs’.

4. usu. in pl., the hands.

1858		‘The Honour of the Family’ Town Talk 10 July 111: Nothing’s too hot or heavy for those forks of yours to carry.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1891		Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette 9 Feb. n.p.: Up they came briskly with shining mugs, shook hands, then stepped back a pace or two, put up their forks, and the spectators were hushed into silence, for they saw the battle was about to begin [F&H].
1898		Binstead & Wells A Pink ’Un and a Pelican 179: You kin git yer forks in on Mr Berkeley Seymour proper.
1941		G. Kersh They Die with Their Boots Clean 122: I can use me forks a bit, but nothing like ole Bullock.
1956		‘Charles Raven’ Und. Nights 168: I read the story through then stuck the linen in Andy’s fork.
1989		in G. Tremlett Little Legs 194: fork hand.

5. the crotch; thus ext. as the penis.

1834		‘Fat Bacon’ in Luscious Songster 5: He pulled out his fork, and he tipt her some pork.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 35: Many of the French importations [...] attract hither many of the French cruizers stationed on the coast of St. James, Regent-street. [...] Though the swell snob, who is always up to his fork in leather, has measured most of these ‘polley wooes,’ as he classically terms them, he says you can hardly tell the difference, in the dark, between the French kid and the good English calf.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 490: (He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent serpent tongue, his hand on his fork.).
1956		J. Curtis Look Long Upon a Monkey 191: Stringy hit the deck, curling into a ball, his head tucked on his chest, elbows close to his sides, wrists crossed in front of his fork.
1969		P. Boyle All Looks Yellow to the Jaundiced Eye 58: There are sounds coming from his open mouth that could very well come from from someone after getting a woeful kick in the fork.
1990		Tupper & Wortley Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Fork. The crotch.
1991		(con. 1960s) B. Quinn Smokey Hollow 162: They’d catch up on girl cyclists wearing slacks and yell ‘emptyfork’ and the girls would screech back ‘Take more than youse to fill it’.
2006		posting at www.terrypratchettbooks.com 10 July 🌐 My next ‘Oook’ will be followed by a kick in the fork!
2009		P. Temple Truth 353: He took the steps, and he kicked the man in his fork, it was not worth it.

6. (Aus.) a jockey.

1989

R. McDonald Rough Wallaby 210: A jockey was a ‘fork’, his whip a ‘flute’.