Help needed in the Steampunk vocabulary

[Damnd of Hell]

Salutation's to one and all.  Hopefully everyone saw a wondrous holiday season; but now I need some help.  I'm working on season two of my project (Now just called Hostages) a HBOish type of series that combines the world of Steam/Diesel/Goth/Cyber punk worlds.  In season II, it's been five years since the destruction of the Papists, Ferrous Priesthoods, and Moralist party attempt to destroy a yet to be known mission which would end their rules forever.  But not all is well, they abandoned many parts of the Steam realm abandoning family, duty, and in many respects their very own children.

So, here's the terminology I got so far:    Walk away's - Those parents who just walked away, abandoning their children in their homes, to find better world.  Throw away's- Children who were thrown out of their family home by their parents for some sin, usually disowning them, all ages here.  Run Away's- Parents, children who run away, usually due to the pressure of family dynamics, or to protect their family.

Now the issue is, I'm going to be using the term 'Pack' to refer to those kids who grouped into gangs, but I need a term for those who were rescued by others, including the Peace Makers and households of the area.   Can anyone give me an idea on what this  term could be?

[Hurricane Annie]

 I understand Street Arabs was  a term used to refer to urchins and waifs of the day.  Those that lived in the streets and those that played  in the streets , alleys and rookeries

[Damnd of Hell]

Would probably cause an issue with touchy politically correct people.  But, thanks anyway.       

[henrietta Devereux]

oliver's ?

[Damnd of Hell]

Could work, the Sovereignty of Atlar is a Steampunk realm. 

[pakled]

waifs and urchins I remember. Crime Sprouts? Unfortunates, pocket ticklers, junior ruffians, dunno...just throwin' some out...

[Vagabond GentleMan]

Unfortunates was a term generally reserved for prostitutes...maybe not the best term for rescued urchins.

I think my humble suggestions would revolve around something that played off the word "Pack"...something that meant "rescued from the pack" or "adopted from the pack" either literally or metaphorically.  Like "Mowglies" (as per Kipling), or Dinas (male) or Kamalas/Amalas (female) which would be using the personal names of historical (but also pseudo-legendary) children "raised by wolves" in India but rescued by human-folk...I did some brief searches to see if there were a term used to describe wolf pups adopted by humans but to no avail...someone more familiar with jargon in that area might know one though.

[Damnd of Hell]

Thank you all, everything helps!    

[Never mind the Cogs]

something I heard at my first 'Asylum'; the collective term for a group of urchins is accident. Gangs are also known by a location.....
so...

The Steamworks Accident.

Accident von Zepplin.

etc

[Maets]

Groups of animals http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Pointless/AnimalGroups.html

Some possibilities:  Gaggle, clowder, brace, and on and on.

[walking stick]

Foundling a child (usually an infant) that has been abandoned and has no known parents.  

[Hez]

perhaps shorten "foundlings" to "founds"  as in
"Who's the rehead?"
"Him?  Oh, he's one of Widow Smith's founds, she pulled him out of a pack down dockside."

[Damnd of Hell]

Excellent!  Thank you all.  I'm going to go with a few.  Salvage, I'll use by characters in the derogatory manor;   MAJ. Graysson:  Them? Just salvaged waste!  Col. Mori: Sir, I take offense to such slang!  MAJ. GRAYSSON: is that so! Well what do you call abandoned shit in your realm?  CoL. MORI: Omega Team!  ::Slap across face::

For each of the others, I'll use them in the various groups in Atlar.

[Narsil]

My advice with jargon in fiction is to use a plain English placeholder in your writing and see what starts to make sense. This is after all how slang evolves in the real world.

I've got a bot of a thing about artificial slang in fiction, it often seems to really grate and seem very forced    and often comes as a bit of a lazy attempt to create a sense of an original world.

As several other people have suggested I think that often the best bits of detail in fiction are culled from forgotten bits of the real world. If you look at the slang hat actually gets used it's often so obscure that it would be really difficult to reverse engineer and as such the obvious derivatives frequently don't work.

It's also well worth looking at other languages and anglicizing words to get what you want. The usage in a Clockwork Orange is the obvious example, being largely derived from Russian with reference to cockney rhyming slang.

[LadyAmaya]

How about "Rukh"? adding on to the previous suggestion of "Mowglis". It's the village Mowgli is from based on Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" but could also be a play on words with the term "rook" or "rookery" used to refer to birds, as in the children have "flocked" together?

Good luck with continuing your series.

[walking stick]

Rookeries "Rookery" 18th and 19th century slang term for city slums  Overcrowded, low-quality housing and little or no sanitation. Poorly constructed dwellings, built with multiple storeys and often crammed into any area of open ground, created densely populated areas of gloomy, narrow streets and alleyways occupied by poor people and frequently also by criminals and prostitutes. Sometimes the term rookery was used to mean a brothel including the type that sold children.

[LadyAmaya]

Oooh sorry I did not know that...my bad

Edit: In my defence I was part-way through my morning coffee and didn't think to double check any other meanings of the term...

[Damnd of Hell]

Excellent, thank you all!    I have a part of the rebuilding province just as a closed area like you mentioned, So, that's now going to be called the Rookery, and yes as a slang derogatory.  Excellent!!!!

Narsil, thank you for the advice, In the first season, I had to create a few terms that had to be diverse, but still unique to the realms.  EG:  those of the Great Lakes Confederation, (cyber realm)  as Bot's, wire heads due to their cyber enhancement's that connected them directly with their A. I. and computer frames.   Oiler's for those of the Eastern Republic and diesel realm.  Shades and ghosts for those Tim aria (Goth), Bogs and Beaters for the Outlanders, (mad max type realm) and Pomp's for the Sovereignty of Atlar  the steam realm.   So, I understand, but now I'm running out of terminology.