An Early American Collection of Rogues' Cant

Abstract

The Ladies' Repository, an American lady's book which enjoyed a modest but sustained popularity during the mid-nineteenth century, is today virtually unknown to students of American culture. It has suffered the fate of many such pseudoliterary journals and has long since been confined to some dusty corner in whatever library will have it-perhaps deservedly so. Despite its concern for the typical subject matter of the lady's book-household hints, suggestions on the rearing of children, and endless poems on the death of an infant-The Ladies' Repository is somewhat remarkable for its interest in subjects of a folkloristic nature.' One indication of this interest is to be found in the October 1848 number in a rather lengthy editorial essay by the Rev. Mr. B. F. Tefft entitled Pencilings at Pittsburg. Ostensibly a brief account of the Editor's travels through western Pennsylvania during the early autumn of 1848, the essay dwells at length on Tefft's visit to the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, where he spent the better part of two weeks interviewing one fascinating prisoner whom he chooses to call Napoleon. The minister appears to have developed a fond attachment for Napoleon and understandably so, for the conversation which Tefft presents would seem to indicate that the prisoner was a fairly well-educated man. Tefft writes: