swell mob

plural swell mobs

1. archaicslangWell-dressed thieves and swindlers, regarded collectively.

   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; […]

   1850 September 14, [Charles Dickens], “Three “Detective” Anecdotes”, in Charles Dickens, editor, Household Words. A Weekly Journal., volume I, number 25, London: Office, […], →OCLC

   3 more examples

   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.

   1856, George Laval Chesterton, Revelations of Prison Life, 2nd revised edition, volume 1, London: Hurst and Blackett, →OCLC, page 137

   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.

   1911, G. K. Chesterton, “Our Mutual Friend”, in Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, →OCLC, page 212

   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".

   2002, Meg Arnot, Cornelie Usborne, Gender And Crime in Modern Europe, page 82