Talk:A thieves' cache!/@comment-11509945-20161110205404/@comment-5494781-20170820130136

It's an instance of thieves' cant, which is slang and code commonly associated with criminals of the time. I'm pretty certain "sift" means "stolen or scavenged goods", though I'm mainly going by the obvious context combined with the modern US English definition (an amount of sifted material).

As with any linguistic quirk, there were many different varieties of thieves' cant. A bit of it is in fact unique to Fallen London. I don't think this is, though.

The Topsy-King is basically just a gigantic parody of the concept.

Oh, and one more caveat: for obvious reasons, the people who routinely used thieves' cant didn't leave a large literary footprint. There are countless "canting dictionaries", some as early as 1530, but their accuracy is debatable.