subs. (old).—1. Whitefriars: a district adjoining the Temple, between the Thames and Fleet Street. [Formerly the site of a Carmelite convent (founded 1241) and possessing certain privileges of sanctuary. These were confirmed by a charter of James I. in 1605, whereafter the district speedily became a haunt of rascality in general, a Latinised form of Alsace having been jocularly conferred on it as a ‘debateable land.’ Abuses, outrage, and riot led to the abolition of its right of sanctuary in 1697.] Also ALSATIA THE HIGHER. Whence ALSATIA THE LOWER = the liberties of the Mint in Southwark; ALSATIAN = a rogue, debtor or debauchee; a resident in ALSATIA: and as adj. = roguish, debauched; ALSATIA-PHRASE = a canting term (B. E. and GROSE). [See SCOTT, The Fortunes of Nigel, chaps. xvi. and xvii.].
1688. SHADWELL, The Squire of ALSATIA, i. in wks. (1720), iv. 27. He came out of White-Fryers: he’s some ALSATIAN Bully.
1691. LUTTRELL, Brief Relations of State Affairs (1857), II. 259. The benchers of the Inner Temple, having given orders for bricking up their little gate leading into Whitefryers … the ALSATIANS came and pull’d it down.
1691–2. Gentlemen’s Journal, Feb., 5. Knights of the post, ALSATIAN BRAVES.
1704. W. DARREL, The Gentlemen Instructed, 491. He spurr’d to London, and left a thousand curses behind him. Here he struck up with sharpers, scourers, and ALSATIANS.
1704. SWIFT, Tale of a Tub, ‘Apology for Author.’ The second instance to shew the author’s wit is not his own, is Peter’s banter (as he calls it in his ALSATIA PHRASE) upon transubstantiation.
1709. STEELE, Tatler, 66. Two of [my] supposed dogs [i.e., gamblers or sharpers] are said to be whelped in ALSATIA, now in ruins; but they, with the rest of the pack, are as pernicious as if the old kennel had never been broken down.
1787. GROSE, A Provincial Glossary, etc. (1811), 82. A ’SQUIRE OF ALSATIA. A spendthrift or sharper, inhabiting places formerly privileged from arrests.
1822. SCOTT, The Fortunes of Nigel, xvii. You shall sink a nobleman in the Temple Gardens, and rise an ALSATIAN at Whitefriars…. An extravagantly long rapier and poinard marked the true ALSATIAN bully.
2. (common).—Hence any rendezvous or asylum for loose characters or criminals, where immunity from arrest is tolerably certain; a disreputable locality: the term has sometimes been applied (venomously) to the Stock Exchange. ALSATIAN = an adventurer; a Bohemian.
1834. BULWER-LYTTON, The Last Days of Pompeii. The haunt of gladiators and prize-fighters, of the vicious and penniless, of the savage and the obscene; the ALSATIA of an ancient city.
18[?]. GREENWOOD, Gambling Hell. For this ruin the gambling house is responsible. Huntley is but one of the thousands who are stripped annually of all they possess in this modern ALSATIA.
1861. M. E. BRADDON, The Trail of the Serpent, II. i. Blind Peter was the ALSATIA of Slopperton, a refuge for crime and destitution.
1865. Daily Telegraph, 22 Dec., 4. 6. The two countries are so closely allied that one cannot possibly be turned into an ALSATIA for the criminals of the other.
1876. LORD JUSTICE JAMES [Ex parte Saffery re Cooke, Law Times, 35, 718]. The Stock Exchange is not an ALSATIA; the Queen’s laws are paramount there, and the Queen’s writ runs even into the sacred precincts of Capel-court.
1882. BESANT, All Sorts and Conditions of Men, vii. The road has come to be regarded as one of those ALSATIAN retreats, growing every day rarer, which are beyond and above the law.
