Taxidermist

Someone who preserves, stuffs, and poses dead animals so that they appear bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“Gussie, I was sorry to observe, did not share my sunny confidence. Possibly I had not given him a full enough explanation of the facts in the case, or it may have been that, confronted with Spode in the flesh, his nerve had failed him. At any rate, he now retreated to the wall and seemed, as far as I could gather, to be trying to get through it. Foiled in this endeavour, he stood looking as if he had been stuffed by some good taxidermist, while I turned to the intruder and gave him a long, level stare, in which surprise and hauteur were nicely blended. ‘Well, Spode,’ I said, ‘what is it now?’”

P. G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters (1938).

Syndic

A civil magistrate entrusted with the affairs of a town or community.

“In reading the chronicle of Mathieu d’Escouchy, simple, exact, impartial, moralizing, one would think that the author was a studious, quiet and honest man. His character was unknown before Monsieur du Fresne de Beaucourt had elicited the history of his life from the archives. But what a life it was, that of this representative of ‘colérique Picardie.’ Alderman, then, towards 1445 provost, of Péronne, we find him from the outset engaged in a family quarrel with Jean Froment, the city syndic. They harass each other reciprocally with lawsuits, for forgery and murder, for ‘excès et attemptaz.’ The attempt of the provost to get the widow of his enemy condemned for witchcraft costs him dear. Summoned before the Parlement of Paris himself, d’Escouchy is imprisoned. We find him again in prison as an accused on five more occasions, always in grave criminal causes, and more than once in heavy chains. A son of Froment wounds him in an encounter. Each of the parties hires brigands to assail the other. After this long feud ceases to be mentioned in the records, others arise of similar violence. All this does not check the career of d’Escouchy: he becomes bailiff, provost of Ribemont, ‘procureur du roi’ at Saint Quentin; he is ennobled. He is taken prisoner at Montlhéry, then comes back maimed from a later campaign. Next he marries, but not to settle down to a quiet life. Once more, he appears accused of counterfeiting seals, conducted to Paris ‘comme larron et murdrier,’ forced into confessions by torture, prevented from appealing, condemned; then rehabilitated and again condemned, till the traces of this career of hatred and persecutions disappear from the records.”

J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).

Snail breeder

An escargot monger.

"The luxury and profusion of Roman gastrology were attested by their lepories, their lobsteries, and their snaileries."

W. H. Smyth, Roman Medals (1834).

Nimmer

A petty thief.

"These are the Nimmers who would rob me of all my moveables."

Sorel's Comical History of Francion (1655).

Eunuch

Someone whose lack of ability makes him perfect for the job. Literally, "guarding or keeping the couch." A castrated male in charge of a harem (Webster's).

"The nearer the Emperor approached to Rome, the greater was the license of his march, accompanied as it was by players and herds of eunuchs, in fact by all that had characterised the court of Nero."

Tacitus, Histories (100 AD).

Resurrectionist

A grave robber who would steal cadavers and sell them for dissection.

"The key to it all was his long career as a resurrectionist; his notorious recklessness about getting subjects. There was that body of a young girl brought from New Hampshire that suddenly appeared in the College last year. Resurrectionists, after all, would do anything in these hard times to procure their income. Many cut off heads and sold those separately to specialists in optics or other superior organs."

Simon Schama, Dead Certainties (1991).

Seedsman

Someone who sells seeds. Someone who carries seed to a sower who actually plants it.

“Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High Street of the market-town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be a very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop: and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom.”

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861).

Bookie

Someone who runs a betting operation, usually illicit, setting odds and taking bets on just about anything.

“‘Because, look here, I’m going to have quite a good deal of money at any moment. It’s more or less of a secret, you know—in fact a pretty deadish secret—so keep it dark, but Uncle Joe is going to give me a couple of thousand quid. He promised me. Two thousand of the crispest. Absolutely!’

‘Uncle Joe?’

‘You know. Old Keeble. He’s going to give me a couple of thousand quid, and then I’m going to buy a partnership in a bookie’s business and simply coin money. Stands to reason, I mean. You can’t help making your bally fortune. Look at all the mugs who are losing money all the time at the races. It’s the bookies that get the stuff.”

P.G. Wodehouse, Leave It to Psmith (1924).

Fire-Eater

A juggler who eats or pretends to eat fire. By extension, someone who is able to do a huge amount of work in very short order.

"Richardson, the famous Fire-eater before us devour'd brimstone on glowing coals, chewing and swallowing them."

John Evelyn, Diary (1700).

Song-smith

Someone who composes songs.

"These jangling song-smiths are keen love-mongers, They snap at all meats."

Charles Algernon Swinburne, Chastelard (1865).

Portraitist

An artist who specializes in painting someone's likeness.

“In the Middle Ages portraits were ordered for all sorts of purposes, but rarely, we may be certain, to obtain a masterpiece of art. Besides gratifying family affection and pride, the portrait served to enable betrothed persons to make acquaintance. The embassy sent to Portugal by Philip the Good in 1428, to ask for the hand of a princess, was accompanied by Jan van Eyck, with orders to paint her portrait. Court chroniclers liked to keep up the fiction that the royal fiancé had fallen in love with the unknown princess on seeing her portrait—for instance, Richard II of England when courting the little Isabelle of France, aged six. Sometimes it is even said that a selection was made by comparing portraits of different parties. When a wife had to be found for the young Charles VI, according to the Religieux de Saint Denis, the choice lay between a Bavarian, an Austrian and a Lorraine duchess. A painter of talent was sent to the three courts; three portraits were submitted to the king, who chose the young Isabella of Bavaria, judging her by far the most beautiful.”

J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).

Struggler

The owner and driver of a horse-drawn carriage.

"A musher, or a struggler, is a man who drives a horse and cab which is his own property, and his only 'lot.'"

The Globe (1887).

Chief of the Royal Stables

A constable.

“The shocking sight of Moneins’s murder, and no doubt of other disturbing scenes during that week [in 1548], taught Montaigne a great deal about the psychological complexity of conflict and the difficulty of conducting oneself well in crises. In this case, the violence was eventually calmed, mainly by Montaigne’s future father-in-law, Geoffrey de La Chassaigne, who negotiated a truce. But the city would suffer a severe punishment for allowing such disobedience. Ten thousand royal troops were sent there in October under the Constable de Montmorency; the title ‘constable’ officially meant only ‘chief of the royal stables,’ but his job was one of immense power. The troops remained for over three months, with Montmorency conducting a reign of terror. He encouraged his men to loot and kill like an occupying force in a foreign country. Anyone directly identified as having taken part in the [salt-tax] riots was broken on the wheel, or burned. Everything was done to humiliate Bordeaux physically, financially, and morally.”

Sarah Bakewell, How to Live or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010).

Unclean Barefooted Minstrel Friar

A monk. Of the various orders of religious "brothers" or friars, the most important were the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Augustines, and the Carmelites.

"Moreover at this time, some five or six years before, there was on the Main a Barefooted Friar who was driven out from among the people, for he was unclean [with leprosy]. He made the best songs and carols in the world, both words and melodies, wherein there lived not his like in Rhineland or in these parts. And, whatsoever he sang, all men sang it gladly after him; all masters, pipers, and other minstrels followed his songs and words. It was he who made that song: 'Far from the village am I bann'd,/ All doors are closed to wretched me!/ Unfaith, unfaith is all I see/ On every hand."

Tilman von Wolfhagen, The Limburg Chronicle (1374).

Masked Farmer

“In April [1933] there were rumblings from the West, and resounding echoes of them in Washington. The nation’s farmers were in a state approaching open revolt. Prices paid for their output had fallen piteously low—the index of wholesale farm commodities stood at about 40 percent of its 1926 level—and as a result, they were caught in a seemingly hopeless bind. Even though they sold every crop they grew, the prices were insufficient to meet their mortgage payments, and they were being dispossessed by the tens of thousands. There began to be incidents of violence; one day late that month, in Le Mars, Iowa, a mob of masked farmers dragged a judge from his bench to a crossroads and nearly lynched him in an effort to force him to promise to stop signing mortgage foreclosures. But criminal assaults on legal authority could serve no purpose; what the farmers chiefly needed was the classic remedial measure for debtors in hard times—a deliberate governmental inflation of the currency such as Bryan had preached so long and so eloquently, that would raise prices and enable the farmers to pay off in cheap money the debts they had contracted in dear money.”

John Brooks, Once in Golconda (1970).

Educators and Jailers

"A dollar in a university is worth more than a dollar in a jail."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life (1860).

Dispensator

Someone who administers the goods of another. An officer who lays out money for a household.

"When by Pope Innocent's command, the dispensators collected ransom-money from the aged, the poor, and the sick, this same usurer feigned poverty and gave one of the dispensators about the sum of five marks, thus deceiving the priest. His neighbours afterwards testified that he might have given forty marks without thereby disinheriting his children, as he pretended. But God, who could not be deceived, presently put a terrible end to his trickery."

Caesarius of Heisterbach (13th century)

[Joseph Strange's edition (1851).]

Master of Divination

Someone who uses any of various methods to (purport to) predict future events.

"The boys employed by Masters of Divination know their job very well. When their employer has gone to perform a service of purification, the boys recite the invocations in his place, and everyone accepts this as normal. Again, if a patient has lost consciousness, the boys quickly and expertly sprinkle cold water on his face without a word from their master. It makes me envious to see how clever they are, and I only wish I could have such boys in my service."

Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book (11th Century).

Piper

Someone capable of playing a penny whistle.

"The forty men in the flutists' circle played most marvelously. The sound of their flutes, mingled with the sighing of the pines, was like a wind coming down from deep mountains. 'Waves of the Blue Ocean,' among falling leaves of countless hues, had about it an almost frightening beauty."

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (11th Century).

Inquisitor

Someone who investigates into crimes, taxation, and other matters. A detective. An officer of the Inquisition, who investigated people accused of blasphemous or heretical religious beliefs.

“Nevertheless, the town suffered severely in consequence: people would no longer shelter its merchants or give them credit, for fear that, accused of witchcraft, on the morrow, perhaps, they might lose all their possessions by confiscation. One of the inquisitors, who claimed to be able to discover the gulty at sight, and went so far as to declare that it was impossible for a man to be wrongly accused of sorcery, afterwards went mad. A poem full of hatred accused the persecutors of having got up the whole affair out of covetousness, and the bishop himself called the persecution ‘a thing intended by some evil persons.’”

J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).