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This paper investigates how  cant  is used to represent the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers. Cant refers to the special vocabulary that is associated with and used by people living on the margins such as thieves and prostitutes. Little work has been conducted on the use of this language in courtroom texts. Using a historical pragmatic framework, evidence of the actual occurrence of cant as well as metalinguistic evidence was generated through lexical keyword searches in the  Old Bailey Proceedings Online . Then the use of marginal vocabulary was examined more closely in extracts from the Sessions Papers using historical discourse analysis. This paper argues that cant is enregistered and that the courtroom recorder and the editor of the Session Papers reproduced the cant language to highlight and draw attention to the maliciousness and culpability of those who were accused in court. Linguistic techniques such as glossing and metalinguistic commentary were inserted to foreground the cant terms in the text. In addition, this historical discourse analysis sheds light on how the witnesses in the courtroom make strategic use of cant terms to portray the defendant in a negative light.

“He said he was going on the scamp”: Thieves’ cant, enregisterment and the representation of the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers