Autem

or autum, autom, antem, subs. (old cant).—A church (HARMAN, B. E., GROSE, et passim). As adj. = married; also in numerous combinations, thus: AUTEM-BAWLER (-CACKLER, -JET or -PRICKEAR) = a parson: spec. of Dissenters; AUTEM-CACKLE TUB = (1) a dissenting meeting-house, (2) a pulpit; AUTUM-COVE = a married man; AUTUM-DIPPER (or -DIVER) = (1) a Baptist, (2) a thief working churches or conventicles, and (3) an overseer or guardian of the poor; AUTUM-GOGGLER = ‘a pretended French prophet’ (GROSE); AUTUM-MORT (see quots. 1567 and c. 1696); AUTUM-QUAVER = a Quaker; AUTUM-QUAVER TUB = a Quaker’s meeting-house.

  1567.  HARMAN, A Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors (1814), 49. These AUTEM MORTES be maried wemen,… they be as chaste as a cowe I have, that goeth to bull eury moone, with what bull she careth not. These walke most times from their husbands companye a moneth and more to gether, being asociate with another as honest as her selfe. These wyll pylfar clothes of hedges; some of them go with children of ten or xii years of age; yf tyme and place serue for their purpose, they will send them into some house, at the window, to steale and robbe, which they call in their language, Milling of the ken; and wil go with wallets on their shoulders, and slates at their backes.

  1586.  W. HARRISON, The Description of England, 184.

  1592.  GREENE, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier [Works, IX. 283]. The Pedler as bad, or rather worse, walketh the country with his docksey at the least, if he have not to mortes dels, and AUTEM MORTIS.

  1610.  ROWLANDS, Martin Mark-all, 7 [Hunterian Club’s Reprint, 1874]. They could not quietly take their rest in the night, nor keepe his AUTEM, or doxie sole vnto himselfe.

  1641.  R. BROME, A Joviall Crew [FARMER, Musa Pedestris (1896), 25].

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. AUTEM MORT, c. a Married-woman, also the Twenty fourth Order of the Canting Tribe, Travelling, Begging (and often Stealing) about the Country, with one Child in Arms another on Back, and (sometimes) leading a third in the Hand.

  1827.  BULWER-LYTTON, Pelham. Job explained … his wish to pacify Dawson’s conscience by dressing up one of the pals … as an AUTEM BAWLER, and so obtaining him the benefit of the clergy without endangering the gang by his confession.

  1834.  W. H. AINSWORTH, Rookwood, III. v. Morts, AUTEM-MORTS, walking morts, dells, doxies, with all the shades and grades of the canting crew, were assembled.

  1859.  G. W. MATSELL, Vocabulum; or, The Rogue’s Lexicon. ‘A Hundred Stretches Hence,’ 124.

  1876.  C. HINDLEY, ed. The Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, 260. A Jew was selling cocoa-nut when the ‘AUTEM CACKLER’ … wanted to impart to the Israelite the sin he committed in carrying on his vocation on such a day [Sunday].

  1901.  HUME NISBET, Children of Hermes, 268. AUTEM-DIVER.