Page:Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant (1889) by Barrere & Leland.djvu/39

. Even the highest ranks were addicted to it, as witness the old saying, "How we swore in Flanders," and the story in Greville's Memoirs of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Anglesea at Waterloo. When the latter was wounded, he cried, "I've lost my leg, by G—d!" "Have you, by G—d!" replied the Duke. But language of correction and reproof is still likely to be strong, and may at times become "abusive" when issuing from a much aggravated adjutant's mouth. A story is told of the last Lord Cardigan which illustrates the style of a military officer of a comparatively modern school. His lordship was being driven to the covert-side in a postchaise, and the postillion lost his way. Lord Cardigan, furious at being made late for the meet, threw down the glass of the chaise and cried, "I may be right or I may be wrong, or I may not be the proper person to say so, but you're a son of, and if I could get near you, I'd twist your neck off."

Academies, canting, the low lodgings or public-houses for cadgers and tramps, lurkers, or the houses of call or country lodging-houses for beggars and impostors who solicit alms by a written petition or forged soldier's or sailor's discharge.

Academy (obsolete), an organisation of thieves; a rendezvous for practising the flash art "dodge;" a goal; a brothel. Termed also "flash-drum,'" [sic] "nanny-shop," "buttocking shop," and in police-court reports, "disorderly house." Establishments where "good beds" are provided for couples are termed "houses of accommodation," which correspond to the French "maisons de passe." A chronicler of old London relates that Sir William Walworth, the city fishmonger, who assassinated Wat Tyler, possessed a number of academies or low brothels in Southwark, which Wat Tyler had levelled with the ground. "Hence," says the old writer, "private feeling and revenge may have prompted Walworth's activity to slay Tyler." Peter Pindar writes that "academy is an euphemistic expression for a house that harbours courtezans." A "finishing academy" is a private brothel, where a staff of young (not common) prostitutes are kept on hire. So called from its being the last gradation of private prostitution before going on the public streets. The girls who chiefly resort to these brothels are work girls who visit on the sly: they are not driven by want or desertion, but go from wilfulness; to use their own words, they "work honestly for a living, but do the naughty for their clothes." A "character academy" a rendezvous for characterless shopmen, footmen, barmen, and others, whereat