This weekend I found a truly entertaining and enlightening read: The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose on the Gutenberg Project. Some nice excerpts:

BASKET-MAKING. The good old trade of basket-making;
copulation, or making feet for children’s stockings.

BED-MAKER. Women employed at Cambridge to attend
on the Students, sweep his room, &c. They will put their
hands to any thing, and are generally blest with a pretty
family of daughters: who unmake the beds, as fast as they
are made by their mothers.

DUTCH FEAST. Where the entertainer gets drunk before
his guest.

HOPPER-ARSED. Having large projecting buttocks: from
their resemblance to a small basket, called a hopper or
hoppet, worn by husbandmen for containing seed corn,
when they sow the land.

MARRIAGE MUSIC. The squalling and crying of children.

OYSTER. A gob of thick phlegm, spit by a consumptive
man; in law Latin, UNUM VIRIDUM GOBBUM

RUM DOXY. A fine wench. CANT.

SHITING THROUGH THE TEETH. Vomiting. Hark ye,
friend, have you got a padlock on your arse, that you shite
through your teeth? Vulgar address to one vomiting.

Read up and enjoy!