When vacation ended, they were kind enough to let me have it (after much whining) because I wanted to post interesting entries online.  But was it still in copyright?

Here’s the citation:

Goldin, Hyman E., Frank O’Leary, and Morris Lipsius, eds. Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo, New York: Twayne, 1950.

When I got the book home I looked up Twayne (they’re now owned by Gale/Cengage), and checked their online catalog.  It wasn’t in there, but that only means it’s out of print, not out of copyright.

Enter yesterday’s release of U.S. copyright renewals by the Google Books team. Since the dictionary was published between 1923 and 1963, the absence of its appearance in the renewals data strongly suggests that it’s public domain.  Not so strongly that I’d just grab the content and re-print it, but enough that I feel comfortable posting some excerpts here now and then.

This time, we’ll start with the “Advisory Board”:

1. Bad Bill – arrested on a variety of criminal pursuits
2. Big Department – extortionist, police impersonator, jewel thief among the NYC elite
3. Bubbles – robber, forger and burglar
4. Butch – bank robber, strike breaker, election fraud boss, car thief, pinball and slot-machine operator
5. Chink – purse-snatcher, safe-robber and armed holdup man
6. Chop Chop – strong-arm terrorist [sic], burglar and robber
7. Dippo – pickpocket from age 14 to 39
8. Duke – pickpock, con man, carnival thief
9. Hal the Rebel – various
10. Iggy – robber, carnival thief, con man
11. Jo Jo – robber and burglar
12. Red Mack – robber and burglar
13. Slim – counterfeiter and forger
14. Stubs – larcenist, forger and swingler
15. The Colonel – con man ["He requests that no further details be made public"]