Hawkubites (3 syl.)

Street bullies in the reign of Queen Anne. It was their delight to molest and ill-treat the old watchmen, women, children, and feeble old men who chanced to be in the streets after sunset. The succession of these London pests after the Restoration was in the following order: The Muns, the Tityré Tūs, the Hectors, the Scourers, the Nickers, then the Hawkubites (1711–1714), and then the Mohocks—most dreaded of all. (Hawkubite is the name of an Indian tribe of savages.)

“From Mohock and from Hawkubite,

Good Lord deliver me,

Who wander through the streets at nigh

Committing cruelty.

They slash our sons with bloody-knives,

And on our daughters fall;

And, if they murder not our wives,

We have good luck withal.”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

Hawkubites (3 syl.)

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