"tarrel" in Hammett?

[Robin Hamilton]

> I'd be surprised if Hammett, a former Pinkerton op (1915-21), needed to
> rely on Matsell.
>
> JL

I wonder.  I'd like to think so, but, "The hotel-sneak used to be my lay,"
for example, seems just a little too archaic or literary for the Street in
1924.  If Hammett *is using it independently of Matsell, that suggests the
term was current from at least 1859-1924.  Also, Hammett was both bright and
a voracious reader, so I'd be surprised if he hadn't come across Matsell,
both as lexicographer and ex-New York Chief of Police, and used him for his
own literary purposes.

Be nice to have an intermediate instance, to confirm.

Robin

> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com>
> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: "tarrel" in Hammett?
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Ah, yes indeed. Thanks. Matsell defines it in plural, so that
>> explains why I didn't find it in a Google Books search; silly
>> of me not to think of this. And to have not checked _DU_.
>>
>> Jesse Sheidlower
>> OED
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 02:30:26PM +0100, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>> > Hammett (or his English protagonist) had been reading George Matsell's
>> > _Vocabulum_ (1859) where a "tarrel" is defined as 'a skeleton key'.
>> >
>> > Matsell is the only citation given in Partridge, _Dictionary of the
>> > Underworld_ (1950 ed.), so it probably wasn't a very common term.
>>  Partridge
>> > has it as obsolete by 1900, but if he found it anywhere other than in
>> > Matsell, he fails to indicate this.  I suspect the "obsolete by 1900"
>> > is
>> > simply a guess or inference on Patridge's part.
>> >
>> > Robin
>> >
>> >> In Dashiell Hammett's 1924 story "The Golden Horseshoe," first
>> >> published in _Black Mask_, a character (an Englishman) says:
>> >>
>> >>  The hotel-sneak used to be my lay... I was rather good at it.
>> >>  I had the proper manner--the front. I could do the gentleman
>> >>  without sweating over it, you know.... I had a rather
>> >>  successful tour on my first American voyage. I visited most of
>> >>  the better hotels between New York and Seattle, and profited
>> >>  nicely. Then, one night in a Seattle hotel, I worked the
>> >>  tarrel and put myself into a room on the fourth floor. I had
>> >>  hardly closed the door behind me before another key was
>> >>  rattling in it....
>> >>
>> >> Perhaps I'm missing an obvious dialect spelling or something,
>> >> but what is _tarrel_ in this passage? I can't find another
>> >> example of it anywhere, and it's not in the notes of the
>> >> Library of America edition of Hammett's stories.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks.
>> >>
>> >> Jesse Sheidlower
>> >> OED

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