The area behind the Savoy prison, between the Strand and the river, was known as Alsatia. Alsatia became a notorious thieves' sanctuary where rogues could gather unhindered by the law.
Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, writing to Charles II in 1673 about the increase in robberies:
Types of rogue:
"Ruffler": one who, pretending to be an old maimed soldier, sought out former
royalist commanders and claimed to have served under them.
"Anglers": thieves who inserted a rod with a hook at the end through
open windows at night.
"Priggers of prancers": horse-thieves. They were the joy-riders of their day,
always carrying a small pad, saddle and bridle for any chance mount. They would
disguise a stolen horse by changing the colour of a
horse's coat, and adding an artificial star to its forehead.
"Polliards" and "clapperdogeons": dishonest beggars who used children,
either their own or borrowed ones, to stir up the sympathy of the charitable.
"Fraters": men who, by a forged patent, pretended they were collecting
money for a hospital.
"Abram men" or "Tom o' Bedlams": thieves who pretended to be mad, usually
by adding ribbons or fox's tails to their clothing.
"Whip Jack": a counterfeit mariner who went about with his
"mort" or woman companion, whom he claimed to have saved from
shipwreck.
"Dommerars": men who pretended to be dumb.
"Kynchen coves": orphans who had taken to the highways.
"Strowling morts": pretended widows, usually working with a
ruffler hidden in the background.
"Quire birds": those who had escaped the gallows by informing on their fellows.
"Patricio", or strollers' priest: performed mock marriage ceremonies, joining
couples over a dead horse; the man and his "mort" shook hands over the carcass
and were thereupon pronounced man and wife.
"Toppin cove": the hangman.
"Fencing cully": a receiver.
The lament of a wench who has lost her rogue to the hangman, from Life in the Reign of Charles II by David Ogg:
Dumb and madman thou could'st play,
When the evening hath been wet,
Mallards then I could not lack,
To thy dog and dish adieu,
The "upright man": the elected leader of a pack,
sometimes equipped with a truncheon.
Now my little rogue is gone,
By the highways begs there none
In body both for length and bone,
Like my clapperdogeon.
Or a drivelling fool all day,
And like a poor man thou could'st pray,
Yet scraped with passes sealed away.
For fire the hedges down did'st beat,
Me then with stolen duck did'st treat,
Or else a fat goose was our meat.
Bacon hung always at my back,
Nor corn wanted in my sack,
With good milk pottage I held tack.
Thy staff and pass I ne'er must view,
Though thy cloak was far from new,
In it my rogue to me was true.
(c) 1996 Molly Brown