List No. 093

DEGREES OF VAGABOND

Thomas Harman

1566

In 1566, Thomas Harman published A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, Vulgarly called Vagabonds, a book that aimed to shine a light on what he believed to be the devious rogues of society. As well as retelling stories of thievery, detailing the techniques of such criminals and providing a dictionary of rogues’ secret language (“Thieves’ Cant”), each of the book’s first 23 chapters were named after a different class of vagabond, as identified by Harman. Those chapter titles soon became the following popular list, as described in William Harrison’s Description of England 11 years later.

The several disorders and degrees amongst our idle vagabonds:

1. Rufflers [thieving beggars, apprentice uprightmen]

2. Uprightmen [leaders of robber bands]

3. Hookers or anglers [thieves who steal through open 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 peddlars]

3. Morts [prostitutes and thieves]

4. Autem [married] morts

5. Walking [unmarried] morts

6. Doxies [prostitutes who begin with uprightmen]

7. Dells [young girls, incipient doxies]

8. Kinchin morts [female beggar children]

9. Kinchin coes [male beggar children].