G'day McGrath,

Without digging through Mayhew for examples, what impressed me, when I read the books many years back, was how different his record of the Cockney slang of 1850-60 was to what we hear nowadays. The two points that struck me were the absence of rhyming slang and the prevalance of back-spelt slang.

Since then I have heard that back-talk is still common ... in their financial dealings, in markets and such - and the rhyming slang is more for show - or 'sport'.

Regards,

Bob Bolton