When I was a boy in London ‘tosh’, or 'tosher', was a name we used to call out to one another if proper names were not known. “Hey, tosh – what’s the time?” for example. But although the term was probably derogatory we didn’t object to it. Perhaps the original meaning had been forgotten by then! I certainly didn’t know it at the time.
But much later I read an extremely good tale (by Macdonald Hastings, I think, possibly called ‘A glimpse of Arcadia’) involving ‘toshers’.
TOSHER: (from http://www.beerguide.co.uk/quote.htm which has some other interesting stuff too):
‘The sewer-hunters were formerly, and indeed still are, called by the name of toshers, the articles which they pick up in the course of their wanderings along the shore being known among themselves by the general term tosh, a word more particularly applied by them to anything made of copper. These toshers may be seen, especially on the Surrey side of the Thames, habited in long greasy velveteen coats furnished with pockets of vast capacity, and their nether-limbs encased in dirty canvas trowsers, and any old slops of shoes that may be fit only for wading through the mud.’ (Henry Mayhews London Labour and the London Poor 1861)
One who, on the Thames, steals copper from ships' bottoms (Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book 1867)It seems amazing that the name should have hung on so long in schoolboy vernacular.
In fact, toshers would climb up the sewers in search of valuable metals and coins. This heavier material would be caught in pockets in the sewer floor and toshers would have their own secret spots where they knew they stood a chance of a lucky find. This was quite a dangerous occupation as they could be swept away and drowned if a sluice was opened while they were still underground.
