Others have long fallen into disuse e.g., chant = dwelling place cly-faker = pickpocket. Vaux' Vocabulary of the Flash Language lays down many words that can still be found in our language today, e.g.croak = to die bolt = to run. James Hardy Vaux author of Vocabulary of the Flash Language, Australia's first dictionary, penned at Newcastle in 1812, wrote that to speak good flash is to be well versed in cant terms. And my observations on these people have constantly instructed me that indulgence in this infatuating cant is more deeply associated with depravity and continuance in vice than is generally supposed. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to reformation. In some of our early courts of justice an interpreter was frequently necessary to translate the deposition of the witness and the defence of the prisoner.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y ZĪccording to Watkin Tench who who arrived on the Charlotte with the First Fleet in 1788.Ī leading distinction, which marked the convicts on their outset in the colony, was a use of what is called the Flash or kiddy language.
