lockup house

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English

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Noun

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lockup house (plural lockup houses)

  1. (now historical) A small house where people are kept in temporary custody after arrest, especially where debtors are held before transfer to a debtors' prison. [from 18th c.]
    • 1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 143:
      He kept a lock-up house in Great Earle Street, Soho, and, although by profession a tailor, he had fitted it up most elegantly as a tavern.
  2. (colloquial, obsolete) A lodging house where men are kept and forced to enlist in the army or navy. [18th c.]