Pierce Egan
1774-

Perhaps best known for his Life in London, or the Day and Night Adventures of In 1823, Egan published an edition of Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, with many additions, a number of them from his own repertoire of racey slang.

Francis Grose
1731-1791

Francis Grose was Adjutant and Paymaster in the Surrey Militia, but was unable to keep proper accounts and had to foot the losses himself, He then departed to take up the career of drawing after his father, the jeweller of George II's crown, died and left him an independent income. He embarked on a survey of "Antiquities of England and Wales," and later produced volumes of "Views and Prospects. His Rules for Drawing Caricatures, with an Essay on Comic Painting were published in 1788 and 1791, with seventeen places etched by Grose.

Concurrently he was compiling his dictionaries, glossaries and a hilarious tome titled: Advice to Officers of the British Army (first published around 1782/3). He fell in love with Ireland and moved there to "save from impending oblivion her mouldering monuments," but died of apoplexy shortly after arriving.

During his lifetime, Francis Grose had become a friend of Robert Burns, who celebrated him in verse.

 

John Mackcoull

John Mackcoull was a petty criminal who was imprisoned, paid his debt to society (or, so he thought), and upon his release was continually hounded by the Bow Street Police office and London magistrates, who succeeded in driving him out of honest business on several occasions and making his life a nightmare through false accusations, false paid witnesses, and several costly trials. Mackcoull published his account of this bureaucratic rigmarole, trying to expose the injustices and prove his innocence of the false crimes he was accused of. His 1812 edition is an updated account of the abuses he suffered while trying to be an honest citizen on the straight and narrow path.