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Friday Fun: Types of Vagabonds

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Types of vagabonds, 1566

By at 11:17 am Thursday, Mar 1

The following is a list of the “23 Types of Vagabonds” as identified in a 1566 book by Thomas Harman called “A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called vagabonds.” These “types” were the chapter titles and a decade later compiled into a list in William Harrison’s book “Description of Elizabethan England, 1577” I’m not sure why “male beggar children” are categorized as “Of Womenkind” unless it’s being suggested that they should be under the care of their mothers. From Lists Of Note:

1. Rufflers (thieving beggars, apprentice uprightment)
2. Uprightmen (leaders of robber bands)
3. Hookers or anglers (thieves who steal through windows with hooks)
4. Rogues (rank-and-file vagabonds)
5. Wild rogues (those born of rogues)
6. Priggers of prancers (horse thieves)
7. Palliards (male and female beggars, traveling in pairs)
8. Fraters (sham proctors, pretending to beg for hospitals, etc.)
9. Abrams (feined lunatics)
10. Fresh-water mariners or whipjacks (beggars pretending shipwreck)
11. Dummerers (sham deaf-mutes)
12. Drunken tinkers (thieves using the trade as a cover)
13. Swadders or peddlers (thieves pretending to be peddlers)
14. Jarkmen (forgers of licenses) or patricoes (hedge priests)

Of Womenkind:

1. Demanders for glimmer or fire (female beggars pretending loss of fire)
2. Bawdy baskets (female peddlers)
3. Morts (prostitutes and thieves)
4. Autem morts (married harlots)
5. Walking morts (unmarried harlots)
6. Doxies (prostitutes who begin with upright men)
7. Dells (young girls, incipient doxies)
8. Kinchin morts (female beggar children)
9. Kinchin does (male beggar children)

The 23 Types of Vagabond“”

I propose that it’s much more fu to think of deviants, homeless and other library users that we serve as vagabonds!  It’s a romantic notion.

Stephen

 

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Posted on: March 23, 2012, 7:07 am Category: Uncategorized

2 Responses

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  1. Surely you have something to say about #9…it is feined, isn’t it?

  2. I never thought there can be so many kind of “such” people