Sorry, this is totally irrelevant to anything, but it amused me...

In Oliver!, before Nancy and Bet make their first entrance to the thieves kitchen, Nancy shouts "Plummy and slam" from offstage. This (it is clear from the book) was the thieves password. But I got into a discussion with the prompt about what, if anything, it meant.
I looked it up in Partridge (Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Historical Slang), which defines it as "All right" a cant term (i.e. underworld slang) from about 1860 to 1910. Since Dickens published the first installment of Oliver Twist in 1837, then either Partridge is wrong (and the term is much earlier) or Dickens coined plummy and slam as an underworld password, and from him it passed into the language!

Whilst following this thread, I browsed a bit further in Partridge and found the following extraordinary definition:

Portuguese pumping: A nautical phrase (- 1909), of which Ware [Passing English, by J. Redding Ware, one of Partridge's sources] was unable to discover the meaning. Nor have I; but I agree with Ware that 'it is probably nasty'.

This is the first time I have ever come across a dictionary definition which admits to being baffled by the word it is trying to define.

The excellent Cassell Dictionary of Slang (Jonathan Green) lists 'Portugese pump' simply as (1950s) masturbation.

Now, without wishing to drag a topic down into the gutter, has this got something to do with a "man o' war"?

Some unique and unusual methods were adopted by the "pumper" to move the surplus water. One old miner told me a "pumper", named Dick Weekes used a "Portuguese" pumping method. In this procedure, a hand pump pushed the water to a 44 gallons drum or similar type container, located some 20 to 30 feet away, thence to a second drum about the same distance, and finally into a sump in a cut-through. Other pit-pumpers were Ted and Bill Crosdale. From the cut-through sump a small electric pump pushed the water up a 2? inches diameter pipe on the rib floor of the haulage heading to the surface. These 2? inches diameter pipes were supplied by Stewart and Lloyds of Newcastle.

http://www.amol.org.au/newcastle/greta/mam.html

is all I can find on it...