autem mort

• autum mort, autom mort

autem mort (plural autem morts)

1. (archaic, thieves' cant) A married woman.
   • 1556, Harman, Thomas, A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors,:

     These Autem Mortes be maried wemen, as there be but a fewe: For Autem in their Language is a church, so shee is a wyfe maried at the church, and they be as chaste as a cowe I have, that goeth to bull euery moone, with what bull she careth not.

   • 1641–42, Brome, Richard, A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, Act 2:

     The Autum-Mort finds better sport / In bowsing then in nigling.

   • 1834, Ainsworth, William Harrison, Rookwood:

     Morts, autem morts, walking morts, dells, doxies, kinching morts, and their coes, with all the shades and grades of the Canting Crew, were assembled.

2. (idiomatic, archaic, thieves' cant) A female beggar with several children hired or borrowed to excite charity.

• (married woman): autem cackler

• (beggar with children): beggar, see also Thesaurus:beggar

• (married woman): autem cove (“married man”)

• [Francis] Grose [et al.] (1811), “Autem mort”, in Lexicon Balatronicum. A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. […], London: Printed for C. Chappell, […], OCLC 23927885.
• [Francis Grose] (1788), “Autem mort”, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd corrected and enlarged edition, London: Printed for S. Hooper, […], OCLC 3138643.
• “autem mort” in Albert Barrère and Charles G[odfrey] Leland, compilers and editors, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, volume I (A–K), Edinburgh: The Ballantyne Press, 1889–1890, page 54.
• Farmer, John Stephen (1890) Slang and Its Analogues‎, volume 1, page 81