The Criminal Alphabet Read Online Free PDF Page A

burglary shall on conviction on indictment be liable to
     imprisonment for life.’
    Aggy, or aggravated
     burglary, is the most violent crime in the burglary genre. It involves forcing your
     way into premises while they are occupied, usually by way of threat or violence, in
     order to steal from those premises. Often, aggy merchants will go
     armed and with the intention of inflicting injury on their victims if they do not
     comply. Most of the time, the aggy merchant relies on the element of surprise,
     either by knocking on the door of the premises and then forcing their way in when
     the door is answered by the unsuspecting occupant, or by effecting an entry in
     secret and then pouncing on the occupants. The occupantsare
     quickly overpowered and secured before being questioned as to the whereabouts of
     cash and valuables. In the criminal pecking order, aggy merchants are viewed with a
     patina of distaste by other serious criminals, but particularly by armed robbers, or
     the heavy mob. Aggy is classed as a very personal crime, because
     the perpetrators often enter someone’s home, rather than commercial or banking
     premises, in order to ply their trade, which goes against the code of the serious
     criminal. Also, some aggy merchants have rather unsavoury reputations for sexually
     abusing or torturing their victims, which doesn’t sit well with the professional
     robber’s ethos of it ‘just being a job’. A lot of psychopaths and other sick people
     are attracted to the aggy game.
    One of the most infamous aggy merchants
     was the legendary highwayman Dick Turpin. Before becoming the dashing highwayman of
     story, song and fable, Turpin worked with a gang of aggravated burglars called the
     Essex Gang. They specialized in forcing entry into isolated farmhouses and torturing
     the occupants for their loot. In one case, Turpin and his gang sat a
     sixty-five-year-old woman on an open fire in order to get her to reveal the
     whereabouts of her valuables. Aggy merchants are particularly nasty people who will
     stop at little in their hunt for the prize.
    See Cat Burglars , Commy
     Burgs , Creeper
AT IT
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    If someone is deemed to be at
     it , it means they are engaged in criminal activity on a regular basis.
     A typical conversation between criminals planning a criminal venture will be about
     who might be at it, in other words, who is still committing crime and who is no
     longer available to takeon the the job because they are ‘on their
     toes’ (on the run from police or prison) or in ‘shovel’ (shovel and pick = nick).
     Career criminals are constantly at it. Though used originally by criminals, this
     phrase is now often used by the police to describe prolific offenders: the police
     will be well aware of who is at it on their particular patch. Of course, like much
     other slang, it has more than one meaning in the criminal world. For example, to
     ‘get someone at it’ means you are pulling a stroke on them, i.e. spinning elaborate
     lies or tales in order to sucker them in (‘I had John checking his car for listening
     devices after I told him I saw someone bugging him. I got him right at it!’).
BILKING
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    Bilking is the practice
     of eluding payment for goods or services by making a quick getaway. These days, it
     is mostly the preserve of motorized bandits and car thieves, who will pull into a
     petrol station, fill their tank with fuel and then drive off without paying. There
     are also a few hard-core bilkers who make it their business to eat in top
     restaurants and leave without paying. If arrested, a bilker will be charged with
     theft. It is believed that the word ‘bilk’ may be a form of the word ‘balk’, which
     is a term used in the card game cribbage.
THE BIRD GAME
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    The bird game added a new dimension to hoisting , in
     that the thieves were after a bit of livestock. Some bored sadist with time on his
     hands discovered that parrots, cockatiels and other expensive