The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue dates from 1811 and this is probably the only full, uncensored and searchable version of this dictionary on the internet. All the original crudities have been restored and it offers an interesting perspective on Common English from the time of the Regency and Jane Austen.

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Entries releated to TOWN

 

BELLOWER		The town crier.
BULL		A blunder; from one Obadiah Bull, a blundering lawyer of London, who lived in the reign of Henery VII. by a bull is now always meant a blunder made by an Irishman. A bull was also the name of false hair formerly much worn by women. To look like bull beef, or as bluff as bull beef; to look fierce or surly. Town bull, a great whore-master.
CARTING		The punishment formerly inflicted on bawds, who were placed in a tumbrel or cart, and led through a town, that their persons might be known.
CORPORATION		The magistrates, etc. of a corporate town. Corpus sine ratione. Freemen of a corporation's work; neither strong nor handsome.
CRISPIN		A shoemaker: from a romance, wherein a prince of that name is said to have exercised the art and mystery of a shoemaker, thence called the gentle craft: or rather from the saints Crispinus and Crispianus, who according to the legend, were brethren born at Rome, from whence they travelled to Soissons in France, about the year 303, to propagate the Christian religion; but, because they would not be chargeable to others for their maintenance, they exercised the trade of shoemakers: the governor of the town discovering them to be Christians, ordered them to be beheaded, about the year 303; from which time they have been the tutelar saints of the shoemakers.
CUNDUM		The dried gut of a sheep, worn by men in the act of coition, to prevent venereal infection; said to have been invented by one colonel Cundum. These machines were long prepared and sold by a matron of the name of Philips, at the Green Canister, in Half-moon-street, in the Strand. That good lady having acquired a fortune, retired from business; but learning that the town was not well served by her successors, she, out of a patriotic zeal for the public welfare, returned to her occupation; of which she gave notice by divers hand-bills, in circulation in the year 1776. Also a false scabbard over a sword, and the oil-skin case for holding the colours of a regiment.
DRURY LANE VESTAL		A woman of the town, or prostitute; Drury-lane and its environs were formerly the residence of many of those ladies.
DUFFERS		Cheats who ply in different parts of the town, particularly about Water-lane, opposite St. Clement's church, in the Strand, and pretend to deal in smuggled goods, stopping all country people, or such as they think they can impose on; which they frequently do, by selling them Spital-fields goods at double their current price.
DUN		An importunate creditor. Dunny, in the provincial dialect of several counties, signifies DEAF; to dun, then, perhaps may mean to deafen with importunate demands: some derive it from the word DONNEZ, which signifies GIVE. But the true original meaning of the word, owes its birth to one Joe Dun, a famous bailiff of the town of Lincoln, so extremely active, and so dexterous in his business, that it became a proverb, when a man refused to pay, Why do not you DUN him? that is, Why do not you set Dun to attest him? Hence it became a cant word, and is now as old as since the days of Henry VII. Dun was also the general name for the hangman, before that of Jack Ketch. And presently a halter got, Made of the best strong hempen teer, And ere a cat could lick her ear, Had tied it up with as much art, As DUN himself could do for's heart. Cotton's Virgil Trav. book iv.
GREENHORN		A novice on the town, an undebauched young fellow, just initiated into the society of bucks and bloods.
HOPPING GILES		A jeering appellation given to any person who limps, or is lame; St. Giles was the patron of cripples, lepers, etc. Churches dedicated to that saint commonly stand out of town, many of them having been chapels to hospitals. See GYLES.
HORN FAIR		An annual fair held at Charlton, in Kent, on St. Luke's day, the 18th of October. It consists of a riotous mob, who after a printed summons dispersed through the adjacent towns, meet at Cuckold's Point, near Deptford, and march from thence in procession, through that town and Greenwich, to Charlton, with horns of different kinds upon their heads; and at the fair there are sold rams horns, and every sort of toy made of horn; even the gingerbread figures have horns.
HUNT'S DOG		He is like Hunt's dog, will neither go to church nor stay at home. One Hunt, a labouring man at a small town in Shropshire, kept a mastiff, who on being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at home. This shortly became a bye-word for discontented and whimsical persons.
LADY OF EASY VIRTUE		A woman of the town, an impure, a prostitute.
MACCARONI		An Italian paste made of flour and eggs. Also a fop: which name arose from a club, called the Maccaroni Club, instituted by some of the most dressy travelled gentlemen about town, who led the fashions; whence a man foppishly dressed, was supposed a member of that club, and by contraction styled a Maccaroni.
MAN OF THE TOWN		A rake, a debauchee.
MOHAIR		A man in the civil line, a townsman, or tradesman: a military term, from the mohair buttons worn by persons of those descriptions, or any others not in the army, the buttons of military men being always of metal: this is generally used as a term of contempt, meaning a bourgeois, tradesman, or mechanic.
ONE OF US, or ONE OF MY COUSINS		A woman of the town, a harlot.
PEEPING TOM		A nick name for a curious prying fellow; derived from an old legendary tale, told of a taylor of Coventry, who, when Godiva countess of Chester rode at noon quite naked through that town, in order to procure certain immunities for the inhabitants, (notwithstanding the rest of the people shut up their houses) shly peeped out of his window, for which he was miraculously struck blind. His figure, peeping out of a window, is still kept up in remembrance of the transaction.
PICKT HATCH		To go to the manor of pickt hatch, a cant name for some part of the town noted for bawdy houses in Shakespeare's time, and used by him in that sense.
PROPHET		The prophet; the Cock at Temple Bar: so called, in 1788, by the bucks of the town of the inferior order.
RUSHERS		Thieves who knock at the doors of great houses in London, in summer time, when the families are gone out of town, and on the door being opened by a woman, rush in and rob the house; also housebreakers who enter lone houses by force.
SPANK		To run neatly along, beteeen a trot and gallop. The tits spanked it to town; the horses went merrily along all the way to town.
TALLY MEN		Brokers that let out clothes to the women of the town. See RABBIT SUCKERS.
TIPPERARY FORTUNE		Two town lands, stream's town, and ballinocack; said of Irish women without fortune.
TOWN		A woman of the town; a prostitute. To be on the town: to live by prostitution.
TOWN BULL		A common whoremaster. To roar like a town bull; to cry or bellow aloud.
WAITS		Musicians of the lower order, who in most towns play under the windows of the chief inhabitants at midnight, a short time before Christmas, for which they collect a christmas-box from house to house. They are said to derive their name of waits from being always in waiting to celebrate weddings and other joyous events happening within their district.
WHETSTONE'S PARK		A lane between Holborn and Lincoln's-inn Fields, formerly famed for being the resort of women of the town.
WHORE'S CURSE		A piece of gold coin, value five shillings and three pence, frequently given to women of the town by such as professed always to give gold, and who before the introduction of those pieces always gave half a guinea.
WOMAN OF THE TOWN, or WOMAN OF PLEASURE		A prostitute.
YELP		To cry out. Yelper; a town cryer, also one apt to make great complaints on trifling occasions.