or -crib, -house, -drum, -ken, -panny, etc.—1. A house frequented by thieves, as a tavern, lodging-house, FENCE (q.v.).
c. 1696. B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew. FLASH-KEN, c., a house where thieves use, and are connived at.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1821. D. HAGGART, Life, ‘Glossary,’ p. 172. FLASH-KAIN, a house for receiving stolen goods. [Haggart’s spelling, being that of the respectable Edinburgh lawyer who took down his ‘confessions’ is generally misleading and inaccurate.]
1828. G. SMEETON, Doings in London, p. 39. It is a game in very great vogue among the macers, who congregate nightly at the FLASH-HOUSES.
1830. BULWER-LYTTON, Paul Clifford, p. 50 (ed. 1854). There is one Peggy Lobkins who keeps a public house, a sort of FLASH-KEN called ‘The Mug’ in Thames Court.
1839. W. H. AINSWORTH, Jack Sheppard (ed. 1840), p. 271. I’ve been to all the FLASH CASES in town, and can hear nothing of him or his wives…. Ibid., p. 135. ‘The Black Lion!’ echoed Terence, ‘I know the house well; by the same token that it’s a FLASH CRIB.’
2. (common).—A brothel; a haunt of loose women.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum (Flash song quoted under FLASH PANNEYS).
| Next for his favourite mot the kiddey looks about, | |
| And if she’s in a FLASH PANNY, he swears he’ll have her out; | |
| So he fences all his togs to buy her duds, and then | |
| He frisks his master’s lob to take her from the bawdy ken. |
1830. BULWER-LYTTON, Paul Clifford, ch. xvi. (ed. 1840). You know how little I frequent FLASH-HOUSES.
1837. R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends (The Lay of St. Aloys), (ed. 1862), p. 380.
| Those troublesome ‘Swells’ | |
| Who come from the playhouses, ‘FLASH-KENS,’ and ‘hells.’ |
1840. MACAULAY, Essays: ‘Lord Clive.’ The lowest wretches that the company’s crimps could pick up in the FLASH-HOUSES of London.
1852. BRISTED, The Upper Ten Thousand, p. 34. You know all the proper celebrities, and none of the improper ones. That is Mary Black who keeps the greatest FLASH HOUSE in Leonard Street.
