In 1950, the postwar crime reporter Percy Hoskins (of the Daily Express) published a book whose title was appropriated by a British television series in the late 1960s and 1970s. This book – No Hiding Place! – promised to be “the full authentic story of Scotland Yard in action”, and it remains a compulsive read today, not least for its helpful guide to underworld slang, presented in an appendix “for the benefit of the young detective”.
From this, we learn such standard slang terms as “bracelets” for handcuffs, “dabs” for fingerprints and “milky” for cowardly, but also less guessable coinages, such as: “He did a tray on the cave-grinder” (he got three months’ hard labour), “kybosh” (one shilling and sixpence) and “on the jamclout” (shoplifting).
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