Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets: An Anthology of Elizabethan Low Life by Gamini Salgado
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was an incredible and different book; a compendium of literature born of and documenting the organized Elizabethan criminal class. I was intrigued by the varied taxonomy of "cony-catching" cons and crooks from common pickpockets and prostitutes to more exotic varieties like those hook things with poles through windows, the "jarkman" vagabond counterfeiter of documents (as licenses, passes, certificates), and illegal coal crews. The horse thieves ("priggers of prancers" as in the colorful slang terminology, glossary on 146) played a role like long-term car thieves, including obscuring marks then as someone would w/VINs now. It seems whenever I read of an epoch's crime body, there is likely an element of disaffected veterans that were not successfully re-integrated into society. Among the ways that shows here is the heavies, the "rufflers".
Then there is "co" (pp. 66, 138), apparently a boy, a rogue, or both. Why can't this 2-letter word be legal in Scrabble and Words With Friends?!
It amazes me how much social engineering, a hallmark of spearphishing and more today, was so important to these crooks. Also, the editors' decisions between footnotes and endnotes is schizophrenic.
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