swell mob

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Noun

swell mob (plural swell mobs)

(archaic, slang) Well-dressed thieves and swindlers, regarded collectively.
- 1841, Charles Dickens, Three Detective Anecdotes:
  But some of the Swell Mob, on the occasion of this Derby that I refer to, so far kiddied us as to hire a horse and shay; start away from London by Whitechapel, and miles round; come into Epsom from the opposite direction; […]
- 1856, George Laval Chesterton, Revelations of Prison Life, volume 1, second revised edition, London: Hurst and Blackett, OCLC 162560077, page 137:
  A grand distinction is to be drawn, in this respect, between the swell mob and common thieves; the former being, for the most part, men of the world, of some education—not appearing at all flash (thief-like), but, on the contrary, acting the part of gentlemen in society.
- 1911, G. K. Chesterton, “Our Mutual Friend”, in Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, OCLC 2029372, page 212:
  There is the old faculty of managing a crowd, of making character clash with character, that had made Dickens not only the democrat but even the demagogue of fiction. For if it is hard to manage a mob, it is hardest of all to manage a swell mob. The particular kind of chaos that is created by the hospitality of a rich upstart has perhaps never been so accurately and outrageously described.
- 2002, Meg Arnot, ‎Cornelie Usborne, Gender And Crime in Modern Europe (page 82)
  A boy called Hewitt, awaiting transportation on the Euryalus hulk in the mid-1830s, told an interviewer that the swell-mob would often call into lodging-houses in order to recruit "go-alongs" for thieving expeditions: "boys are delighted [they] think it an honour to go with a swell-mob".

Derived terms

swell-mobsman

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for swell mob under mob in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)