scuffle hunter

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English

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Noun

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scuffle hunter (plural scuffle hunters)

  1. (now historical) A type of porter or manual labourer formerly employed at a port.
    • 1796, Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis:
      Those (who are distinguished by the nick-name of Scuffle-hunters) prowl about the wharfs […] , under pretence of asking employment: but their chief object is to pillage and plunder whatever comes in their way.
    • 2012, Jerry White, London in the Eighteenth Century, Bodley Head, published 2017, page 221:
      Scuffle-hunters were also found as an addition to the thousand or so warehouse labourers storing and dispatching goods from the port to their destination.
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