A ribald, rollicking historical treat for you this week, as Mr Slang brings to vivid life the world of the 'penny gaff' theatres of London... It is impossible to contemplate the ignorance and immorality of so numerous a class as that of the costermongers, without wishing to discover the cause of ... Read More...

Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London with a trip to the 'specialist' bookshops of The Backside of St Clements... All gone now. What you’re looking at above is the Australian High Commission (though didn’t that get knocked down too a year ago or so?). Like Fred and Rose’s lair at ... Read More...

Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London with a look at the chequered history of Black Mary's Hole... We have been to Clerkenwell before and here we are again. I shall forswear Pissing Alley, long bowdlerized as Passing Alley but still redolent of the odours that named it; I shall ... Read More...

Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London by venturing into an area just off Bethnal Green Road known as the "worst street in London"... So which was the worst street in London? Marked in the most stygian black (‘lowest class...occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals’) on Charles Booth’s ... Read More...

Jonathon Green continues his remarkable slang tour of London with a stroll down the Dilly, taking care to avoid a dose of the Piccadilly cramp... I’m Gilbert the Filbert, the knut with a k, The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé  roué. Oh Hades! the Ladies who leave their wooden huts,  For Gilbert the Filbert, ... Read More...

From Fu Manchu to Fred Astaire this week, as Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London by venturing into the East End's Chinatown and the heady scents of opium and white slavery ...  It's not so much the slang coinage, because Limehouse as such didn't generate any (other than the rhyming slang ... Read More...

Death-sweats, Paddington spectacles and gallows humour this week, as Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London with a trip to Tyburn... It is an old place. A crossroads where as we know wicked deeds assemble. It had a marker: Oswulf’s stone, seemingly pre-Roman and which may have been the meeting-place ... Read More...

Jonathon Green continues his eye-popping slang tour of London with a look at St Giles, once described as offering ‘the lowest conditions under which human life is possible’...  The first time I saw the flaming mot, Was at the sign of the Porter Pot. I called for some purl, and we had it ... Read More...

After trawling Turnmill Street, Jonathon 'Mr Slang' Green continues his slang tour of London by seeking out Alsatia... It’s gone: Water Lane’s gone, not even the name. Mitre Lane’s gone, buried beneath some pile of glass. Ram Alley’s called Hare Court and shelters My Learned Friends. Whitefriars Street, now irony runs ... Read More...

Jonathon Green gives us a slang historian's guide to a street in Finsbury... Now farewell to St. Giles That standeth in the Fields And Farewel to Turnbal strete For that no comfort yeeldes In Whitecross street and Golden Lane Do strapping lasses dwell And so there do in every street Twixt that and Clerkenwell At Cowcross and at Smithfield I have ... Read More...