G. W. Matsell

[George Thompson]

Jonathon Green recently mentioned George W. Matsell as the publisher
of "Leaves from the diary of a celebrated burglar and pickpocket ... "
and previously I had notified the group that his dictionary of criminal
argot originally published in 1859 had been reprinted as The Secret
Language of Crime.  Matsell was a NYC police Justice, then the first
Chief of Police there, then the publisher of the National Police
Gazette and a private eye.  But what was George W. Matsell really
like?  Mike Walsh, a radical journalist of the mid 1840s, provides some
insights.

George W. Matsell was a "deeply depraved lump of animated
blubber"; "this miserable renegade wretch -- this walking mass of moral
and physical putrefaction" and "this degraded and pitiful lump of
blubber and meanness".

These are no doubt common failings among lexicographers and don't
detract from the value of his dictionary -- except that it was largely
plagarized from Pierce Egan's English dictionary of 40 years before.

This is one of my least necessary postings, but I came upon these
references to Matsell in my notes and thought I would share them with
those of you who are also tired of the niminy-piminy tone of politcal
debate these days.  When Mike Walsh laid the rough side of his tongue
on a person, it generally smarted some.  His journal, The Subterranean,
is fairly widely available in university libraries, since it's included
in the American Periodicals microfilm series.  I recommend it to your
attention.

And with these words I take a temporary leave of you all, since I am
starting a sabbatical leave until the beginning of September.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.