AUTEM-DIPPERS Or AUTEM-DIVERS, subs. (old cant).—1. Formerly a nickname for Baptists, from their practice of immersing adult converts, as distinguished from infant sprinkling.
2. Pickpockets who practised in churches were called autem-divers; also churchwardens and overseers of the poor who defrauded, deceived, and imposed upon the parish.
Autem-Goglers, subs. (old cant).—Pretended French prophets—Grose. Conjurors, fortune-tellers—Duncombe.
Autem-Jet, subs. (old cant).—A parson. [From autem, a church + jet, black, in allusion to the black garments usually worn by 'the cloth.'] For some curious synonyms, see Devil-dodger.
Autem, or Autem-Mort, subs. (old cant).—A married woman, i.e., one wedded in a church. [From autem, a church + mort, or mot, a woman.] The term belongs to the oldest cant, and is the subject of a long description in Harman's Caveat. (See quotation.) The old fraternity of vagabonds (for a full description of which, see Cadgers—ANCIENT AND MODERN) was divided into well marked classes, as also were the women who accompanied them in their peregrinations. The men were not strict monogamists, either as regards lawful companions or those of another grade—
1567. Harman. Caveat (1814), p. 49. 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 eury moone, with what bull she careth not. These walke most times from their husbands companye a moneth and more to gether, being asociate with another as honest as her selfe. These wyll pylfar clothes of hedges; some of them go with children of ten or xii years of age; yf tyme and place serue for their purpose, they will send them into some house, at the window, to steale and robbe, which they call in their language. Milling of the ken; and wil go with wallets on their shoulders, and slates at their backes. There is one of these Autem Mortes, she is now a widow, of fyfty yeres old; her name is Alice Milson: she goeth about with a couple of great boyes, the youngest of them is fast Upon xx yeares of age....
1592. Greene. Quip, in works IX., 283. The pedler as bad or rather worse, walketh the country with his docksey at the least, if he have not two, his mortes dels, and Autem Mortis.
1610. Rowlands. Martin Mark-all, p. 7 (H. Club's Reprint, 1874). Here another [complains] that they could not quietly take their rest in the night, nor keepe his autem, or doxie sole vnto himselfe.
1834. H. Ainsworth. Rookwood, bk. III., ch, v. Morts, autem-morts, walking morts, dells, doxies with all the shades and grades of the canting crew, were assembled.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century autem-mort was used as synonymous with a female beggar alone; then another meaning crept into the word—a prostitute.—See Cadger.
Autem-Prickear.—The same as AUTEM-CACKLER (q.v.).
Autem-Quaver, subs. (old cant).—A Quaker. [From autem, a church + quaver, referring to the shaking, peculiar to some of the religious exercises of the Society of Friends.]
Autem-Quaver-Tub, subs. (old
