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Readex Report The Flash Press: New York’s Early 19th-Century “Sporting” Underworld as a Unique Source of Slang By Jonathon Green author of Green’s Dictionary of Slang Green’s Dictionary of Slang, launched in print in 2010 and available online since 2016, currently offers some 55,400 entries, in which are nested around 135,000 discrete words and phrases, underpinned by over 655,000 examples of use, known as citations. Thanks to the online environment, it has been possible to offer a regular quarterly update to the dictionary. “Quite simply the best historical dictionary of English slang there is, ever has been…or is ever likely to be.” — Journal of English Language and Linguistics During the summer of 2020, I focused primarily on American Underworld: The Flash Press, a newspaper collection of the American Antiquarian Society and digitized by Readex. Its 45 titles (ranging from a single edition to runs covering multiple years) provided more than two-thirds of additions and changes in last August’s update. In this article, a version of which appeared on my own blog, I write about the nature of the “flash press” and some of the slang terms that have been extracted from it. Here’s this morning’s New York Sewer! Here’s this morning’s New York Stabber! Here’s the New York Family Spy! Here’s the New York Private Listener! Here’s the New York Peeper! Here’s the New York Plunderer! Here’s the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here’s the New York Rowdy Journal — Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844) An illustration from “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit” by Charles Dickens Taking his first steps through 1840s New York City, the young hero of Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit pays a visit to the offices of the New York Rowdy Journal. The paper was Dickens’ creation, a nod to what he saw as the trashy standards of the contemporary New York press, but there were examples to draw on, sufficient to be known collectively as the “flash press.” Flash, that is, as in hedonistic, immoral, sexually sophisticated and as a result of all this, short-lived. In the accompanying illustration by “Phiz” one may see lying on a cupboard, alongside bottles marked respectively “ink” and “poison,” a volume marked “slang dic.,” but if there was a slang dictionary in use, then it must have been Pierce Egan’s revision of Grose or “Jon Bee’s” Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, &c., both published in 1823 and both, of course, British. America would not have a homegrown version for a further 15 years. Its potential contents, however, were ready and waiting. Thirty years on, writing in his Americanisms (1872) Maximilian Schele de Vere stressed that the most fertile source of cant and slang, however, is, beyond doubt, the low-toned newspaper, written for the masses, which, instead, of being a monitor and an instrument of improvement in the hands of great men, has become a flatterer of the populace, and a panderer to their lowest vices. Thirty years later still, James Murray of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) acknowledged the pre-eminence of the popular press in keeping lexicographers abreast of language’s cutting edge. Neither mentioned, but both might well have done, the “flash press.” It ticked their every box. This new digital resource was created in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society. The flash press flourished for a decade or so. Although in the case of certain titles frustratingly few individual issues have survived, there remain a good number of papers that can be consulted, thanks to the American Antiquarian Society and the digitized versions created by Readex and available as American Underworld: The Flash Press, Among them are The Whip, The Flash, Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard, The Subterranean, The Flagellator, The Scorpion, The Libertine, Life in Boston and New York (from Boston, Mass.), The Spy (from Manchester, N.H.), Venus’ Miscellany (inching towards modern pornography) and various copycats and clones. They were very much a Yankee creation and focused on a local audience. Other “sporting” journals” (best known being The Spirit of the Times, its most successful editor being an ex-“flash press” hack, George Wilkes, formerly of The Flash) might embrace a wider America, or even if based in New York, such as the National Police Gazette, draw in readers from across the country. The hardcore did not, nor did they wish to. The Broadway Omnibus (New York), 1 Nov. 1858. From American Underworld: The Flash Press. They were mainly, but not uniquely American. The 1840s saw equivalents in London (Paul Pry and Sam Sly, or The Town) and Sydney, Australia (The Satirist and Sporting Chronicle) but like their New York equivalents, they vanished almost as soon as they had started picking up readers. The consumers may have enjoyed their salacious prurience; those with the power to curb it and those who found themselves its targets (sometimes one and the same) did not. Whip and Satirist of New-York and Brooklyn, 23 April 1842. From American Underworld: The Flash Press. These newspapers were based on gossip, typically indicated with a wealth of initials which, were “reform” (i.e., a cash payment) not made soon, would be filled out with a full name. In Dickens’ case, his 1842 trip to Gotham was noted by hints at a visit to a brothel that does not, unsurprisingly, appear in his own American Notes. As the Whip of April 23 put it “There was a little dog, and he had a little tail, Oh, what a living Boz you is.” And we can almost surely assume that “tail” here took on its slang meaning: the penis. (It is also fascinating to witness how quickly Dickens creations entered common usage, almost before a new serial had been finished.) The press posed as enthusiasts of reform, but it was the same enthusiasm that has underpinned the hypocritical mouthings of generations of tabloids. The supposedly wicked were shamed, all the better to publicize the details (or at least the heavy- handed suggestions) of their sins. A column like The Rake’s “Invisible Spy” offered all the smug spitefulness of the most dedicated and moralizing censor. Blackmail was never far away. The columns, usually headed “The X [the journal’s title or alternatively a town or city’s name] Wants to Know,” played on the journal’s name to threaten “whipping,” “spying,” “flagellation,” and the clawed descent of both “hawks,” “buzzards,” and other birds of prey. It was these columns, of course, skating on the thinnest of ice, that would see these newspapers prosecuted and shut down. Fifty years later the tradition persisted. Columns headed “They Say” in such Australian papers as the Sunday Times (from Perth, Western Australia) sailed equally close to the wind, as they retailed the scabrous suggestions of what it was that “they” allegedly were saying. And if anything Australia’s racist stereotyping, bad enough in mid-century America, was even worse. The Weekly Rake (New York), 27 Aug, 1842. From American Underworld: The Flash Press. It was not all gossip. There was “racy” fiction too. Foremost among its contributors was George Thompson, who also edited on occasion. His many stories mixed thinly veiled pornography (with constant references to nymphomania, pedophilia, incest, gay sex, miscegenation and group sex), true-crime stories and a fascination with the bizarre. They were regularly advertised in the press: most priced at a quarter per book and five for a buck: Broadway Belle and Mirror of the Times (New York), 22 Jan. 1855. From American Underworld: The Flash Press. At times the flash press became positively mainstream. There would be regular descriptions of brothel dances, with every “inmate’s” (i.e. prostitute’s) dress as minutely delineated as a legitimate magazine might lay out those paraded by princesses at a royal wedding. Like London’s 18th-century guides to the pleasures of Covent Garden, “houses” were specified, along with their address, the name and reputation of “Madame,” the qualifications and charms of the inmates, and the decorations, both down- and upstairs, that clients might expect to encounter. Some journals offered pictures, of girls and of their luxurious backdrop. There were lists of drinks that one “nymph” or another preferred to imbibe. There were also instructions as to the best theaters to visit if you wanted to find a partner for the night: the “third tier” circle of the Chatham or the Chestnutt were especially recommended. If all else failed, there were regular mentions of Mrs. Restell, New York’s best-known abortionist and allegedly protected—for a cut—by the city’s Police Commissioner Matsell. The papers, like their “straight” peers, had no mutual affection. It was a rare issue which did not feature one savaging the other—usually on the grounds of the supposedly lax morality of their editors. The Whip and The Rake were especially barbed towards each other, reflecting, perhaps, their success and the near-identical nature of their writing. For a detailed history of the flash papers, well illustrated by a range of excerpts, the best resource is The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York (2008) by Patricia Cline Cohen, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. This looks at the sociology and when relevant the politics behind the press; at those who edited them and those who read them; and those, mainly existing within the New York sexual underworld of brothels, pimps, bawds, whores and of course clients, who provided—either as informers or participants—their stories. Patricia Cohen and her colleagues only mention the language of the press in passing, focusing on what it said rather than the actual words and phrases that comprised it.

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