Rhyming slang and toad" (the main road) and "apples and pears (stairs), as well as many more obscure examples, e.g. "Battle of the Nile" (a tile, a vulgar term for a hat), "Duke of York" (take a walk), and "Top of Rom" (home). It remains a matter of speculation whether rhyming slang was a linguistic accident, a game, or a cryptolect developed intentionally to confuse non-locals. If deliberate, it may also have been used to maintain a sense of community, or to allow traders to talk amongst themselves in marketplaces in order to facilitate collusion, without customers knowing what they were saying,
William Pears Group William Pears Group William Pears Group is one of Britain's largest property companies, with £6 billion of property in London and south-east England. The William Pears Group was founded in 1952, by Bernard Pears (who changed his name from Schleicher on emigrating from Austria) and his son Clive Pears. It is run by Mark Pears with his younger brothers Trevor and David. According to "The Daily Telegraph", Mark Pears is a director of 212 companies, a "complex labyrinth of operating and investment companies", but won't say which is the main holding company or what the group's annual profit is. William