Coney-catching Coney-catching Coney-catching is Elizabethan slang for theft through trickery. It comes from the word "coney" (sometimes spelled "conny"), meaning a rabbit raised for the table and thus tame. A coney-catcher was a thief or con man. It was a practice in medieval and Renaissance England in which devious people on the street would try to con or cheat vulnerable or gullible pedestrians. The term appears in "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare, and in the John Florio translation of Montaigne's essay, "Of the Cannibals." The term was first used in print by
Sandra Coney 30 books on topics including history, feminism, and women's health care. In 1993, Coney was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal. In the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours, Coney was appointed a Companion of the Queen's Service Order, for services to women's health. Sandra Coney Sandra Lorraine Coney (born 22 October 1944) is a New Zealand local body politician, writer, feminist, historian, and women's health campaigner. She is best known for her co-authorship (with Phillida Bunkle) of a "Metro" magazine article that alleged that women had been experimented on, without their consent, at National Women's Hospital in Auckland. The article,