I've been reading a borrowed copy of William Harrison's 1587 Description of England lately. William is very good on the low-life of his time and he quotes with relish the work of one Thomas Harman who listed all kinds of "ungracious rabble" who infested Elizabeth's realm.
There were, first and foremost, the rufflers the lowest of the low because they pretended to be soldiers. They ruffled poor wayfaring men and market women, and should be given "twined hempe". The low German is ruffelen, to crumple.
Hookers and anglers carried a staff with a hook in reserve, with which they lifted desirable articles such as purses. Priggers of prancers were horse-thieves. Prig may be from Spanish preguntar, to demand. Palliards (from French palliard), beggars who slept on straw, paille, in barns. Abrams pretended to be mad in order to raise alms; Edgar's device in King Lear would be instantly recognisable by Shakespeare's audience; Thomas Decker (1612) has the gloss "going Abram, that is to say, naked". Fraters were bogus collectors for charitable causes (Latin, frater, brother). Jarkmen or patricoes were bogus clergymen who offered to marry people at cut rates. The origin of jarkmen is obscure, but they were essentially counterfeiters. Patrico is Pater (Latin pater, father) Cove.
Of the womenkind, Mr Harman lists bawdy-baskets, which needs no interpretation. He follows with morts, autem morts, walking morts and kinching morts. A mort is a female. Autem morts were married; "autem in their language is a church," says Harman. Could this be Yiddish for a thoumme (or tume), a (forbidden) church? Was the term in Yiddish so early? Or is it from (church) anthem, Eric Partridge asks. Walking morts went from place to place in the course of their professional duties, and kinching morts would now be called female juvenile delinquents. Kinching is the equivalent of the German kinder; Dickens's Fagin knew the kinching lay, the robbing of children sent on messages.
Mr Harman then gives us dells, which were virgins. Dilla means a maiden in Yiddish; in old Dutch slang, dil, del and dille is a girl. Doxies were morts neither married nor virgin. As to mort: "origin unknown", says Oxford. I think it's a perversion of Dutch mot, a whore, as found in mothuys, a brothel. Dublin has softened the old word to mean, simply, a girl. Joyce has it in Ulysses: ". . . Marie Kendall . . . one of them mots that do be in the packets of fags".