[Ads-l] Australian National Corpus Database [or The Brady Mob]

[Robin Hamilton]

As a follow up to my earlier post, and with thanks to the various members of the
list who contacted me backchannel with suggestions and assistance, here follows
a summary of the result.

(The entire piece runs to five pages, too long to post. If anyone is interested
in the expanded material, do contact me backchannel -- having shot my fox,
others may wish to nibble on the carcass.)

Robin Hamilton

_____________________________________

        The Brady Mob – An Etymological Conundrum Disentangled

(With special thanks to Stephen Goranson, who not only obtained a copy of
Ingleton, but scanned the relevant pages.)

Short Version:

The term “mob” in the particular sense of a group of criminals, familiar today
in its American application to the Mafia, originates in Australia in the late
1820s. It initially appears in the phrase, “Brady’s mob”, applied to those
associated with the bushranger Matthew Brady (hanged in 1826) and his
associates, and is later extended to any group of criminals. It has only a brief
active period in Australia, as the various elements which went to make up the
bushranger gangs (or mobs) disappeared with the lessening importance of criminal
transportees there .

About the same time that its use declined in Australia, it appeared in America,
where it is first found in the dictionary of criminal argot published by the
former Chief of the New York Police, George Matsell, as the _Vocabulum Or, The
Rogue's Lexicon_ in 1859.

There is no evidence of its use in this sense in England at this time, and it is
only in the early twentieth century that it finally crosses the Atlantic and
becomes part of the English colloquial vocabulary.

The earliest appearance of the term which I have found is in 1834. The first
citation in the OED ["mob, n.2, 5. a. A gang of criminals, esp. thieves"],
placing its earliest appearance in 1826, is incorrect, as are the two following
citations there (1839 and 1851). The implication, that the word in this sense
was current in England before the early twentieth century, is misleading .

__________________________

> 
>     On 28 March 2017 at 02:11 Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Does anyone on the list have access to the above database? I'm trying to
> get
>     the source of what is cited in
>     http://www.clemens-fritz.de/publications/From_Plato_to_Aristotle.pdf as
>     "<2-013>"
> 
>     I *think* it's from an issue of _Hobart Town Gazette_ some time in 1826,
> as a
>     follow-up to the 6 May 1826 issue.
> 
>     If it exists, it should contain the earliest example of the term "mob"
> used for
>     a gang of criminals, linked to the Brady Mob, in memory of Matthew Brady,
>     gentlemanly bushranger, who was hanged that year.
> 
>     For the moment, I'm completely stumped, so any help would be much
> appreciated.
> 
>     Robin Hamilton.
> 
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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