The Criminal Alphabet (36 page)

Jack
is the female
genitals (rhyming slang: Jack and Danny = fanny;
fanny
is slang for
vagina), as in ‘Stop moaning or you'll get a swift kick in the Jack'.

If somebody tells you that they prefer to
be on their
Jack Jones
, it means they want to be on their own
(rhyming slang: Jack Jones = alone). Jack Jones is an American pop crooner who had
several hits in the 1960s and '70s, including ‘Sons and Lovers'.

A
jack's
is a £5 note
(rhyming slang: jack's alive = five). The term ‘jack's alive' is used in the card
game blackjack but has come, in criminal usage, to mean five of anything, but
particularly money, as in ‘I'll lend you a jack's until canteen day'. In Irish
slang, ‘the jacks' are the toilets.

If someone threatens to give you a kick
in the
Jacobs
, it would be a good idea to cross your legs (rhyming
slang: Jacobs cream crackers = knackers; ‘knackers' is slang for the testicles).
See
Niagaras

A sexually active and attractive girl
under the legal age of consent but looking older is
jail bait
. Any
sexual activity with a girl like this, if discovered, will lead to jail for the
perpetrator.

See
Nonce

If someone calls you a
James
, they are in fact calling you a c*** (rhyming slang, from
James Blunt). A pretty recent arrival in the slang lexicon and much loved by
youngsters.

See
Berk

If something is described as
jank
, it means it's no good, rubbish or unacceptable, as in
‘This fucking
nick
is jank' or ‘I can't use this razor, it's
jank!'.

See
Pony (1)

A
jiggler
is a homemade
key or skeleton key that has to be jiggled in a lock in order for it to work.
Somebody who is
mustard
at picking locks is known as a jiggler.

The name of
Johnny Cash
,
a world famous country and pop singer who started out at the small Sun studios in
the early 1950s, is now used as rhyming slang for a medical complaint: Johnny Cash =
rash.

The
jump
is any counter
in a bank, building society, post office or any other building where cash and
valuables are held
.
‘Going over the jump' is an old expression for
robbery and comes from the act of physically jumping over the counter in order to
snatch the prize. It's not so common nowadays, when most banks have bulletproof
screens to stop robbers from getting over counters.

See
Across the Pavement

A
kite
is a cheque (it's
as light as a kite), and a
kiter
is someone who passes bad or fake
cheques. To go out ‘flying kites' is a criminal expression meaning you are passing
stolen or forged cheques. The heyday of kiters or kite flyers was the 1980s and
'90s, when security around fraud was still pretty lax. The average price a thief
could get for a chequebook and guarantee card would be a ‘ching' (£5) per page, and
the average chequebook had thirty-two pages, so stealing and selling them was pretty
good business. As might be expected, forged or stolen cheques were used for criminal
acts such as cashing them for money or using them to pay for goods which could then
be sold on for cash. At
one stage there was at least one London
firm that was paying burglars to break into small building society branches out in
the country to steal the company chequebooks. With a company cheque or building
society cheque you could buy larger, more valuable items and the London firm was
using the cheques to buy things like cars, speedboats and Rolex watches from the
pages of
Exchange and Mart
and paying with building society cheques, which
are as good as money in the bank. The items bought with the stolen cheques would
then be sold, creating 100 per cent profit.

To be
knackered
is to be
tired out after severe exertion. The word is probably Irish in origin, as Gypsies
and Travellers are known as
knackers
and buy old horses and cattle;
tired-out horses end up in the knackers' yard. To call an Irish Traveller a knacker
is definitely fighting talk and will inevitably lead to violence; it's as offensive
as calling a black man a nigger. Often extended into rhyming slang: cream crackered
= knackered.

See
Jacobs

A
lardy
is a cigar
(rhyming slang: la-di-da = cigar).

To
lodge
something or
someone is to hide it for later retrieval, as in ‘
Old Bill
came up
the street so I had to lodge the tools' or ‘I lodged Jimmy in the lock-up until the
heat dies down'.

See
Stash

Man dem
is a West Indian
expression meaning ‘us', particularly when referring to a gang. For example, one of
the most notorious gangs in North London is known as the Tottenham Man Dem, meaning
the men of Tottenham.

See
Boy Dem
,

Merry heart
means
girlfriend (rhyming slang: merry heart = tart). It's been in use since the 1950s and
replaced
Richard
(Richard III = bird). The term is mainly used
between men, as in ‘I'm taking my merry heart to the pictures tonight', but rarely
to a girlfriend's face.

See
Richard

To be
mob-handed
means
to be in a group intent on crime or violence. It's used quite a lot in prison when
referring to beatings by the screws, who always come mob-handed. It comes from the
football hooligan days of the 1970s when, if you turned up at an away ground with
your gang or mob, you were said to be ‘going mob-handed'.

A
monkey
is racecourse
slang for £500. The word was brought back by servicemen returning from India and
used in civilian life when some of these men ended up working as bookies or
enforcers at UK racecourses between the wars. This sum of money was called a monkey
because the Indian banknotes had pictures of animals on them, and
the 500 rupee note featured a monkey. These slang words for money were quickly
adopted by criminals and are still in constant use today.

See
Pony

To
mooch
is to move
about in a sly manner. If you are going to ‘case a job' or if you are just going out
on spec, then you might say you are ‘going for a mooch'. The word possibly comes
from the old French word
muchier
, which means to hide or skulk. In America,
apparently, a moocher is someone who is on the
ponce
, begging or
looking for a handout. In 1931, jazz ‘scat' singer Cab Calloway recorded a song
called ‘Minnie the Moocher', which sold over a million copies. The song is heavy
with drug references, although the word ‘mooch' has little connection with the drug
world.

In the criminal world, just like in the
straight world, a
mucker
is a good friend, someone who will muck in
with you when things start getting difficult or dirty.

To be called
mustard
is
a good thing, as it means you are red hot at what you do, as in ‘Wow! Fingers is
mustard at the con game!'.

To be holding
Nelsons
means that you are in possession of cash (rhyming slang: Nelson Eddy's = readies).
(Nelson
Eddy was an early film star and singer who had hit duets
with a female singer/actor called Jeanette McDonald.)

See
Bunce

If someone offers you a kick in the
Niagaras
, it would be best not to take them up on the offer as
it involves a blow to the testicles (rhyming slang: Niagara Falls = balls).
Sometimes shortened to ‘Niags'.

See
Jacobs

A
nicker
is one pound.
The origin of this is unknown, but the word is widely used even today. It used to
refer to the old £1 note, but with the introduction of the pound coin, one pound is
also now known as a ‘bar' or a ‘nugget'.

See
Two Bob

To get
one in the nut
means to be shot in the head – executed. If you are ordered to give someone one in
the nut, there can be no mistake that the instruction is to kill them. Also known as
a ‘lead injection behind the ear', this is the favoured method of killing by
criminal hitmen, usually by way of a large-calibre bullet.

See
Double tap

If someone invites you
on the
cobbles,
they are suggesting that you should go outside for a
fistfight. It comes from
the days when the roads were made from
cobblestones, and means to fight out in the open. A cobbles fight is generally
deemed to mean a fair fight with no weapons involved. Cobbles fighters are much
respected in the criminal world as real hard men of courage and skill. Many infamous
criminals were also great on the cobbles, the most infamous of them all being armed
robber Roy Shaw. Shaw was rumoured to have been the one that got away from the
Eastcastle Street Ppost Office robbery in 1953, which netted over £200,000 in cash,
the biggest cash robbery in the UK before the Great Train Robbery of 1963. The raid
was said to have been planned by ‘King of the Underworld' Billy Hill, and Roy Shaw
escaped a police ambush by hanging underneath a lorry and escaping unnoticed in the
mêlée. Roy Shaw went on to become one of the greatest bare-knuckle and unlicensed
fighters in the UK.

See
Straightener

Page 16
is the page of a
prisoner's official wing record used to make comments and observations on the
prisoner for later reports. Some prison staff will use page 16 to record their
suspicions or any rumours they have heard about the prisoner. Red ink on your page
16 means bad reports. This information will be taken into account when the prisoner
applies for any privileged job, for home leave or parole.

Paper
is modern youth
slang for money. It originated in America and was made popular by gangsta
rappers.

Pig's ear
is beer in
rhyming slang, as in ‘I had a few pig's ears and lost track of the time.'

See
Gold Watch
,
Vera

To
pinch
something
usually means to steal something small, as in ‘I pinched a bit of his baccy when he
wasn't looking.'

It can also mean to be arrested, as in
‘He was loitering so he got pinched by the
rozzers
.'

See
Chore

In British slang to be
pissed
usually means to be very drunk, but in America being
pissed means you are in a bad mood or angry about something. The Americanism is
coming into popular usage by the young criminal who sees anything American as
glamorous, including their slang.

See
Brahms
,
Elephant's

If someone tells you they are
polo
, it means they have no money (rhyming slang: Polo mint =
skint).

See
Borasic

If someone says they are ‘going for a
pony
' it means they are going to defecate (rhyming slang: pony
and trap = crap), but it is also widely used in the criminal world to mean anything
that you might describe as crap, as in ‘That fucking motor you sold me is absolute
pony!' or ‘Don't go to Dartmoor
nick
, mate; the weather down there
is pony.'

See
Jank

In racecourse parlance a
pony
is £25 and this was soon adopted by the criminals who
frequented the races in order to extort money from the bookmakers for ‘protection'.
It comes from the old Indian rupee notes which featured pictures of animals; the
twenty-five rupee note featured a horse.

See
Monkey
,
Pony bag

To tell
porkies
is to
tell lies (rhyming slang: pork pie = lie).

Prang
is a word widely
used by youths of West Indian origin and means to be frightened or nervous, as in
‘He knew I was strapped cos I could see him getting prang'.

See
Bottle (2)

A
punter
is a customer
or someone willing to buy something stolen. It was originally used on the racetracks
and was used to describe a person who will have a punt (small bet on an outsider),
and then adopted into the criminal world via prostitution. The clients of
prostitutes became known as punters because not only were they paying but they were
also taking a gamble that they weren't going to get venereal disease from any of the
girls and boys they had intercourse with. The term is now generally used by
criminals for amateur buyers of stolen goods, i.e. the general public. A
professional buyer of stolen goods is known as a
fence
.