shagging & fucking

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/4/2010 09:55 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>I read court testimony in the newspapers, and in a monthly
>publication called the N-Y City-Hall Recorder, published from about
>1818 to about 1824.  Both are usually a sort of half-baked verbatim,
>a condensed verbatim, and observe the decencies.
>I have looked at the complaints in the New-York County District
>Attorney's files, at the NYC Archives, but only for certain months,
>when I have been hoping to find some particular case.  As I recall,
>I've found one or two words of some interest, which I've posted to
>ADS-L -- the only one I recall at the moment was from a case of
>child molesting -- the little girl's mother testified that her
>daughter said the man put his hand on "my little kibble".
>I don't know that there is a manuscript file of trial court
>testimony.  I'd also like to find records of the hearings before
>coroner's juries.

What a shame.  I've found several choice utterances in the published
or manuscript records of colonial Massachusetts courts.  (Colonial
Maine court records are entertaining too.)  Generally I first
encountered these, or saw them hinted at, in secondary sources,
histories of the period.  Did NYC not publish court transcripts for
the 19th century, as Boston and some country courts did for the 17th and 18th?

Joel


>GAT
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre",
>Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>Date: Saturday, September 4, 2010 7:10 pm
>Subject: Re: shagging & fucking
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > At 9/4/2010 01:11 PM, George Thompson wrote:
> > >My usual reading matter -- NYC newspapers, 1801-1850 -- offer
> > >remarkably few dirty words, so I must hope to find them elsewhere.
> >
> > George, do you read court testimony?  Or were they tamer in the 19th
> > century than in New England in the 17th and 18th centuries?
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org