Peachum
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Peachum is a character name in both:
- John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728)
- Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil's The Three-Penny Opera (1928).
The name derives from thieves' cant, "peach," of the 18th century. It is a clipping of "impeach." Thus, the character name means "the one who impeaches them." The character in both plays is a "thief catcher." For John Gay, the model was Jonathan Wild, the "thief-taker general of England and Ireland."
