swell-mobsman

Stanley Lake was swearing, in his low tones, like a swell-mobsman to-night.

Wylder's Hand 2003

'He's a vulgarian, he's a swell-mobsman, he's the sort of man who hangs about the corridors of trains going to the Riviera and steals ladies' jewel-cases.

Seven Men Max Beerbohm 1914

And the landlord had ever insisted that no one, no one at all, could always distinguish with certainty between a real gent and a swell-mobsman.

Tales of the Five Towns Arnold Bennett 1899

Stanley Lake was swearing, in his low tones, like a swell-mobsman to-night.

Wylder's Hand Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1843

You may well believe him a choice flower in the bouquet of the corporation; we mean the corporation that banquets and becomes jubilant while assassins stab their victims in the broad street -- that becomes befogged while bands of ruffians disgrace the city with their fiendish outrages -- that makes presidents and drinks whiskey when the city would seem given over to the swell-mobsman -- when no security is offered to life, and wholesale harlotry, flaunting with naked arms and bared bosoms, passes along in possession of Broadway by night.

An Outcast or, Virtue and Faith

The murderer's widow of Prague was built of sterner stuff; she cared not a hempen strand for Joanna, a pale consumptive doxy, according to her picturing, who had jilted me for an eminent swell-mobsman in London. "

The Belovéd Vagabond William John Locke 1896

Now, I haven't been pursering for ten years without learning something, and I can smell a swell-mobsman almost before I see him. "

Tom Gerrard Louis Becke 1884

She was spared from any encounter with a travelling swell-mobsman, who would have garotted her for the sake of her watch and purse, or an insolent bagman, who would have made himself obnoxiously agreeable on account of her pretty face. "

The Lovels of Arden 1875