Was James Hardy Vaux a flash in the pan or a creme of the crop crim

If I picked up a flat, then what did I do? Did I find an apartment, or pop a tyre? In 2021, either scenario sounds feasible, presuming you can afford to rent in Sydney. Yet in 1812, the meaning was pure flash.

Not showy-flash, but flash in the family way, where family denotes an alliance of thieves, cly-flakers and kitten-riggers. Hang on, this must be confusing. Let’s take a few steps back, arriving in Coal River, the city now called Newcastle. That’s where James Hardy Vaux, alias Flash Jim, compiled this nation’s first dictionary.

James Hardy Vaux played a key role in shaping our unique vernacular.Credit:Jo Gay

Flash was the underworld slang of convicts. When not lugging trolleys of black diamonds (coal), Vaux sacrificed his glim (candle) to catalogue words such as betty (a picklock) and crabshells (shoes), driz (lace) and pear-making (joining the military so as to abscond with the enlistment bounty).

Vaux pulled a similar stunt twice in his life, his list of priors longer than a goanna’s Manchester (tongue). If he wasn’t playing the letter-racket (using a forged reference to defraud charitable funds), he was pinching fawneys (rings) or cly-faking (picking pockets).

The man made three separate trips to Port Jackson, between 1801 to 1831, wearing His Majesty’s pyjamas on each occasion. Briefly, at least, since Vaux’s literacy, plus his huckster charisma, saw his shackles replaced with quill and inkpot, securing a sinecure to collate each journey’s logs.

Kel Richards, veteran broadcaster and word lover, has woven such fugitive details into one lucid narrative â€" Flash Jim (HarperCollins, 2021) â€" to lend more substance to Australia’s maiden lexicographer. The portrait is overdue. While Vaux was no hero, his dictionary does play a key role in shaping our unique language.

Indeed, the colony’s early officials, like marine diarist Captain Watkin Tench, needed interpreters to unravel flash in the courts. Wily as ever, Vaux sensed a niche. Not only a chance to muster the argot he’d gleaned from his misspent prime, but also to ingratiate himself to the authorities.

By candlelight, by alphabet, he braided the influences of English dialect (bloke, paddock), Aboriginal words (cooee, bombora), trooper talk (fence, galloot) and convict-code (where picking up a flat meant robbing an honest citizen). Dozens of entries still flourish today, from cadge to snitch, ring-in to yarn. Try passing a week without any talk of rackets or kids.

Deceptive words, what linguists know as false friends, also pepper the glossary, from wrinkle (fib) to crap (gallows), chatty (lice-ridden) to judge (a seasoned felon). Meantime crosswords sustain their quota too, notably rum (odd) and lag (prisoner). As Richards writes, “The Australian language appears to have begun as it intended to go on: as an inventive, informal, cheeky branch of English.”

Haze however continues to hover around Vaux’s life. Debate surrounds his surname’s pronunciation, for starters. Was it “Vox” as in Vauxhall or “Vo” as iced vo-vo? Then there’s the iffiness of the public record, largely penned by the recidivist himself, a lifelong swindler whose unreliable memoir paired with his dictionary, appeared as a single volume in London in 1819.

That’s 200 years ago, making Vaux’s glossary â€" that appends Flash Jim â€" both eerily familiar as it is alien. Later today, say, if I take a snooze, and go on a lark, then I’m talking cogent flash. Then again, should I cop the halter for kitten-rigging (hang for stealing a pewter mug), I’d at least have grounds for an appeal.

Still, one truth is clear, to quote British novelist Philip Hensher, “I’d rather be shipwrecked with a good dictionary of Australian slang than with any other reference work.” Jim Vaux’s glossary had likely flashed to Hensher’s mind.

davidastle.com

David Astle is the crossword compiler and Wordplay columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a broadcaster on ABC Radio Melbourne.

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