Part 63 (1/2)

RAT. A drunken man or woman taken up by the watch, and confined in the watch-house. CANT. To smell a rat; to suspect some intended trick, or unfair design.

RATS. Of these there are the following kinds: a black rat and a grey rat, a py-rat and a cu-rat.

RATTLE. A dice-box. To rattle; to talk without consideration, also to move off or go away. To rattle one off; to rate or scold him.

RATTLE-PATE. A volatile, unsteady, or whimsical man or woman.

RATTLE-TRAPS. A contemptuous name for any curious portable piece of machinery, or philosophical apparatus.

RATTLER. A coach. Rattle and prad; a coach and horses.

RATTLING COVE. A coachman. CANT.

RATTLING MUMPERS. Beggars who ply coaches. CANT.

RAWHEAD AND b.l.o.o.d.y BONES. A bull beggar, or scarechild, with which foolish nurses terrify crying brats.

READER. A pocket-book. CANT.

READER MERCHANTS. Pickpockets, chiefly young Jews, who ply about the Bank to steal the pocket-books of persons who have just received their dividends there.

READY. The ready rhino; money. CANT.

REBUS. A riddle or pun on a man's name, expressed in sculpture or painting, thus: a bolt or arrow, and a tun, for Bolton; death's head, and a ton, for Morton.

RECEIVER GENERAL. A prost.i.tute.

RECKON. To reckon with one's host; to make an erroneous judgment in one's own favour. To cast-up one's reckoning or accounts; to vomit.

TO RECRUIT. To get a fresh supply of money.

RECRUITING SERVICE. Robbing on the highway.

RED FUSTIAN. Port wine.

RED LANE. The throat. Gone down the red lane; swallowed.

RED RIBBIN. Brandy.

RED LATTICE. A public house.

RED LETTER DAY. A saint's day or holiday, marked in the calendars with red letters. Red letter men; Roman Catholics: from their observation of the saint days marked in red letters.

RED RAG. The tongue. Shut your potatoe trap, and give your red rag a holiday; i.e. shut your mouth, and let your tongue rest. Too much of the red rag (too much tongue).

RED SAIL-YARD DOCKERS. Buyers of stores stolen out of the royal yards and docks.

RED SHANK. A Scotch Highlander.

REGULARS. Share of the booty. The coves cracked the swell's crib, fenced the swag, and each cracksman napped his regular; some fellows broke open a gentleman's house, and after selling the property which they had stolen, they divided the money between them.