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Jail   /dʒeɪl/   Listen
Jail

noun
(Written also gaol)
1.
A correctional institution used to detain persons who are in the lawful custody of the government (either accused persons awaiting trial or convicted persons serving a sentence).  Synonyms: clink, gaol, jailhouse, pokey, poky, slammer.



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"Jail" Quotes from Famous Books



... Dock, maliciously. "You can't find the Caribbee. Mr. Watson, I may rot in jail; but you will never see your daughter again if you go on with this matter. If you want to get her back, pay me the money I ask, let me go, and you shall have her ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... in last night's outrage, and will on no account be seduced to a similar adventure. Rawbon himself will not be likely to show himself in this vicinity for some time to come, unless as the inmate of a jail, for I have ordered a warrant to be issued against him. The whole affair has resulted evidently from some unaccountable antipathy which the fellow entertains ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... country had been required to do a little more drillin' in years gone by we'd be feelin' somewhat safer to-day. Anyway, it's a mighty great mistake sometimes to make a martyr out of a rascal. Puttin' him in jail, unless you're absolutely certain that a jail is where he properly belongs, gives him a chance to raise the cry of persecution and gives his followers an excuse to cut loose and smash up things. You ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... sound it made in Hester's ears as she bent to support one of the smaller girls, who had fainted. "Agen' you? Take an' look around on your mornin's work! You've struck down my brother's son, Tom Trevarthen—isn't that enough? Go an' pack your kit; I'll have no jail-birds ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the "green yule" which the proverb says "makes a fat churchyard." That proverb was justified sadly enough at North Aston, for typhus set in among the low-lying cottages, and, as in olden times, when jail-fever struck the lawyer at the bar and the judge on the bench in stern protest against the foulness they fostered, so now the sins of the wealthy landlords in suffering such cottages as these in the bottom to exist reacted on their own class, and the fever entered other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... people of the city to their situation. The former obtained and published proofs of the rascality of the Ring, mass meetings were held and an election in November, 1871, overturned Tweed and his associates. Some of them fled from the country, while Tweed himself died in jail. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... sort of stupefied awe, and allowed him to proceed, while miserable tramps, who stole overcoats or robbed money drawers, were incarcerated for a term of years, and then sternly refused assistance afterward by good people, who place no confidence in jail birds. ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the King burst forth into audible ejaculations of a lamentable nature. There is no getting over, then, even to Brandenburg, and in an insolvent condition. Not open insolvency and bankrupt disgrace; no, ruin, and an Austrian jail, is the one outlook. "O MON DIEU, O God, it is too much (C'EN EST TROP)!" with other the like snatches of lamentation; [Valori, i. 104.] which are not inconceivable in a young man, sleepless for the third ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... policeman brought Ivan Mironov back to the police-station, and he was charged with forging the coupon. Only after taking the advice of a drunken office clerk in the same cell with him, and bribing the police officer with five roubles, did Ivan Mironov get out of jail, without the coupon, and with only seven roubles left out of the twenty-five he ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... as can only be learned at a large cattle ranch. On our way home we passed through Laramie, Wyoming. As fate would have it, we arrived at Laramie City on July 4, 1875, just as the notorious Jack Watkins escaped from the Albany county jail, and the excitement in the town was at fever heat. Jack Watkins, who was probably the most desperate criminal that was ever placed behind prison bars, had been arrested and placed in close confinement, as the officers of the western states had long tried to effect his capture. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... Mayor's office, and related the story; and the city marshal, having seen Green the day before engaged in a fight, suspected that he was leagued with the gamblers, and had him arrested; and though no proof was brought against him, he was fined and sent to jail. There he was kept for several months, in company with counterfeiters, murderers, highwaymen, and gamblers, whose principal amusement was card-playing; when he was discharged penniless, in rags, ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... High Seas. The order required the hostages to be confined in the cells reserved for prisoners accused of infamous crimes. The hostages selected, seven in number, were under this order, taken to Henrico County Jail, a stone building in Richmond, with high windows looking out upon a stone wall not ten feet off, of equal height with ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson

... all right; but I had next door to nothing else, unless I could find a safe place to jail him while I disposed of his men. Now, if they chose to rush me, I could not hold the eight shack windows against them, if Paulette and I might each hold a door. If I took to the bush with Paulette and Marcia, and Macartney, I had nowhere on earth ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... be clapped at once and ignominiously into irons, thus to be carried to their promised land, the port of destination, and alas! brought back in the same way to that from which they started, and there delivered over to the magistrates and the seclusion of a county jail. Since I crossed the Atlantic, one miserable stowaway was found in a dying state among the fuel, uttered but a word or two, and departed for ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the room, for his reflections even now were uneasy ones. He remembered how the facts were placed before the Colonial Office and how the sentence of death was commuted to one of imprisonment. For five years she remained in jail, until the real assassin committed ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... his title by the emperor at the time when he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for a violent and unprovoked assault upon a Jewish newspaper proprietor, declared in the legislature, to which he had been elected on emerging from jail, that public opinion was becoming outraged by the impropriety of the conduct of the emperor. The scene which ensued defied description. Schoenerer was suspended, and had not steps been taken to assure his protection, would have been subjected ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... intend to put to the proof, anyway," I answered, somewhat testily, "and if it fails, I'm afraid you'll have to go to jail till I can dig ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... turning to Geoffrey. "Suppose we must let en come? His looks are rather against en, and he is terrible silly; but 'a have never been in jail, and 'a won't do ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... alone into the midst of that congress of beggars, and he heard his own name repeated from mouth to mouth, for he could hardly fail to encounter among them some jail-bird familiar with the judge's office, just as Theodose was certain to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... 1835), Mr. Garrison was waited upon, in open day, by a mob of most respectable citizens, while attending a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his body, and locked up in jail by the Mayor of that sedate city to protect him from his assailants. On the 4th of July, 1834, a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society was broken up in New York, and the house of Lewis Tappan was sacked ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... been joined by a number of the Frenchmen, and some few of the worst characters of the English crew—the jail-birds chiefly, who had been won over with the idea that they would sail away to some beautiful island, of which they might take possession; and live in independence, or else rove over the ocean with ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... are in order. One prison camp was like another in this sense, that it deprived a man of his liberty. It put him in jail. The British regular, who is a soldier by profession, was, in a way, in a separate class. But the others were men of civil industries and settled homes. Except during their term in the army, they went to the shop or the office every day, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... in and out of jail during the first part of the continental wanderings, was forced to leave for home the day after we got back to The Hague. He had five days to catch the Lusitania at Liverpool. Three of them he spent on a whirlwind trip trying to see action in northern Flanders, but, much ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... might have endured more patiently an absolute privation of liberty than the more modified restrictions to which my residence in the Sanctuary at this period subjected me. If, however, the feelings I then experienced were to increase in intensity according to the difference between a jail and my actual condition, I must have hanged myself, or pined to death—there could ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... cowl, and left them with only some short cassocks such as are worn by clergymen. They delivered them to the bishop, who was already prepared for the degradation. He immediately began to degrade them, and then delivered them over to the secular arm. They were taken to jail by the strong guard of soldiers that had been in the church ever since the criminals had been removed from the prisons to hear the sentence. But it was possible to execute this sentence against three only, because Fray Andres Encinas had escaped the night before, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... gave me one hundred dollars in a bag as a retaining fee. I could scarcely believe my senses; it seemed like a dream. The heaviness of the fee spoke but lightly in favor of his innocence, but that was no affair of mine. I was to be advocate, not judge nor jury. I followed him to jail, and learned from him all the particulars of his case; from thence I went to the clerk's office and took minutes of the indictment. I then examined the law on the subject, and prepared my brief in my room. All this ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... needs uh cleanin' in more ways than one. Now if this town was run right, when folks misbehaves, they oughter be locked up in jail and if they can't pay no fine, they oughter be made to work it out on ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston

... Honest old Bridget gave in her age with effrontery as "twinty-five." Anne giggled and flounced, and declared on her word she didn't know,—they could put it down as they liked. "But, Anne, you must tell, or you may be sent to jail, you know." ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the Memoirs of Thomas Ward, now in confinement in the Baltimore Jail, under a sentence of ten years' imprisonment for robbing the United States Mail. Baltimore. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at H . . . just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood up in my ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... novel jail, while Tessie is "at large" still, trying to make her way to the beckoning city, with its alleged thrills and glories. After disastrous experiences Tessie obtains employment in the home of the fairy-like Jacqueline Douglass, ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... find there was another," said the detective, "you'll be safer in jail. Lives count nothing in the games of princes, and they'll get us both ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach

... burst out Cricket, "and I ought to be put in jail. Will had been showing me how to wrestle, and he had taught me such a good twist, that I caught Archie on, and I thought I'd just show grandma—just barely show her, auntie, and I put my foot around her ankle, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... difficulties too, and do not make the cruiser a demigod. On the whole, I have myself nothing but respect, comparatively speaking, for the dull solid Howard, and his "benevolence," and other impulses that set him cruising; Heaven had grown weary of Jail-fevers, and other the like unjust penalties inflicted upon scoundrels,—for scoundrels too, and even the very Devil, should not have more than their due;—and Heaven, in its opulence, created a man to make an end of that. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... of course, a failure. Her selfish vacillating nature was such that she could not remain true to the poor fool who had given her his name. To provide the luxuries she incessantly demanded, he embezzled the funds of the bank where he was employed, and when exposure came, and he was confronted with a jail sentence, she was horrified to see him kill himself in front of her. There was a momentary spasm of grief, a tidal wave of remorse, followed in a few brief weeks by the peculiar recuperation of spirits, beauty and attractiveness that so marks this type of woman. Gradually ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... being carried before Matenius, the governor, was ordered to sacrifice to the pagan deities, agreeably to the edicts of various Roman emperors. The governor, perceiving his constancy, sent him to jail, and ordered him to be heavily ironed; flattering himself, that the hardships of a jail, some occasional tortures and the weight of chains, might overcome his resolution. Being decided in his principles, he was sent to Amantius, the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... give Sen a scolding? That will surely do just as well, and I shall save my money as well as my face. Besides, if I tell Lin that I am a thief, perhaps he will send for a policeman and they will haul me off to prison. Surely going to jail would be as bad as wearing feathers. Ha, ha! This will be a good joke on Sen, Lin, and the whole lot of them. I shall fool Fairy Old Boy too. Really he had no right to speak of my father and mother in the way he did. After all, they died of fever, and ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... Jail," I said. "If the County Jail doesn't get out of the way, we go through it. Didn't you ever hear that ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the strength nor the spirit to perform their duties as efficiently as Englishmen would, but I believe that, for the most part, they honestly do their best; and for honest service, faithfully performed, perpetual flogging seems to me but a poor reward. The jail-birds among our own countrymen are the most difficult subjects to deal with, and flogging only hardens them; if I had to deal with them I should be far more disposed to look for a cure from the contempt and raillery of their shipmates. Besides, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... child, he won't know anything about it," said Silas; "gentlefolks didn't ever go up the Yard. But happen somebody can tell me which is the way to Prison Street, where the jail is. I know the way out o' that as if I'd ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... inspired much confidence—he was a man who did not have to be amused or cajoled. "You will be left alone to do your work," said Fitz-Roy to Darwin, "and I must have the cabin to myself when I ask for it." And that settled it. Life aboard ship is like life in jail. It means freedom, freedom from interruption—you have your evenings to yourself, and the days as well. Darwin admired every man on board the ship, and most of all, the man who selected them, and so wrote home to his sisters. He admired the men because ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... Tarleton occupied the house of Mrs. Wilson, requiring her to prepare a meal for them as though they had been her friends. Cornwallis, in the meantime, finding out that her husband and one of her sons were his prisoners in the Camden jail, artfully attempted to enlist her in ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... concerning that sentence in 'De Profundis': 'That purely political conception of religion which regards the Ten Commandments as a sort of 'cheap defence' of property and life, God Almighty as an ubiquitous and unpaid Policeman, and Hell as a self-supporting jail, a penal settlement at ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... political offenders, such as the followers of Monmouth, who were punished by transportation for a term of years or for life to the plantations. Others were criminals or unfortunate debtors who were sold in America instead of being sent to jail. Others were persons who had been kidnapped and carried across the sea into servitude. Yet others were men and women who voluntarily bound themselves to work for a term of years in payment of their passage to the colonies. By far the largest number of the white servants in Washington's ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... called as he drove off. "I guess your term is pretty nearly over. I shall let you out of jail inside of four or five days, if ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... sleep, but she lay awake thinking of her troubles. Of her husband carried home dead from his work one morning; of her eldest son who only came to loaf on her when he was out of jail; of the second son, who had feathered his nest in another city, and had no use for her any longer; of the next—poor delicate little Arvie—struggling manfully to help, and wearing his young life out at Grinder Bros when he should be at school; of the five helpless younger children ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... he said. "If she sent men after Baba, there is no knowing what they might do. It would not do any good for you to say he was yours. They would not believe you; and they might take me too, if the Senora had told them to, and put me into Ventura jail." ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... officers who had him in custody; and when, having escaped from his deliverers, he, with a parade of obedience to the law, again surrendered himself voluntarily at the gate of the King's Bench Prison, they threatened to attack the jail itself, kindled a fire under its walls, which was not extinguished without some danger, and day after day assembled in such tumultuous and menacing crowds, that at last Lord Weymouth, the Secretary of State, wrote a letter to the Surrey magistrates, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... Not Fountaine's self more Parian charms has known, Nor is good Pembroke more in love with stone. The bailiffs come (rude men profanely bold!) And bid him turn his Venus into gold. "No, sirs," he cries; "I'll sooner rot in jail; Shall Grecian arts be truck'd for English bail?" Such heads might make their very busto's laugh: His daughter starves; but(7) Cleopatra's safe. Men, overloaded with a large estate, May spill their treasure in a nice conceit: The rich may ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... them for using sword or pen for their honest livelihood. But all Margaret's arguments and Will's courage were on one occasion overturned, by the riever's apprehension for stealing a cow, belonging to a farmer at Stobbs, of the name of Grant. He was carried to Jedburgh jail, and indicted to stand his trial before the Lord Justice-General at the next circuit. There was a determination, on the part of the crown authorities, to make an example of the most inveterate riever of the time, and Will stood a very fair chance of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... (really intended to spare his life, as well as that of the magistrate) had absolutely injured his spine, probably for life. He had with great difficulty been carried to Sydney, and there placed in the hospital instead of the jail; since, disabled as he was, no one wished to prosecute the poor wretch, and identification was always a difficulty. Harold had been taking daily care of him, and had found him in his weak and broken ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from his pipe. "It's a mighty good thing, Mart, that people an' dogs ain't judged entirely by looks. If they was, there's some dogs that's racin' that would be in the pound, an' some men that's criticizin' that would be in jail." ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... my self-respect with me when I deliver my inaugural address this forenoon. The only way I can possess it is by ramming Morrison into jail." ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... Geary Bill, which was an outrage, our people being thrown into jail for a year and then sent back. I might quote some of the charges made against our people. Mr. Geary, I understand, is an Irish ex-congressman from the State of California, who, while in Congress, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... prosecuting attorney suggested to the court that the prisoner Green be brought in in order that sentence be passed upon him. "Certainly, certainly," said the Judge, and the prisoner was at once brought in from the jail near by. ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... the wily bishop in refusing. The continued brutality of Didrik Slagheck had raised such a storm of indignation in the country, that his own followers had found it necessary, on June 16, to hurry him out of Sweden, and announce that they had thrown him into jail. Nearly all of Sweden, except the fortified castles, was in the patriots' hands. The forces of Gustavus were growing stronger day by day, and in the continued absence of Christiern the fortresses that still held out were likely ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... and made her way to Jackson. The first part of her journey being through the country she passed unnoticed, until on her arrival at Jackson she was stopped by the police, who demanded her papers. Not having any she was confined in the county jail, and after due notice in the papers, calling for the owner to come and take her away, she was sold at auction according to law. The girl was very much grieved at her failure to find her mistress, but being of a good disposition soon became contented with her lot. Accordingly, when Dr. Humphries ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... without being knocked down. For, of all places upon earth, Harthover Place (which he had never seen) was the most wonderful, and, of all men on earth, Sir John (whom he had seen, having been sent to jail by him ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... space. Mack Vibart would be chief engineer at all times. Yves Jacquemont would be first officer under Nichols, and captain outside atmosphere. They had three real space crewmen, named Roddell, Youtsko and O'Keefe, who had been in Storisende jail as a result of a riotous binge when their ship had lifted out, six months before. The rest of the company—Jerry Rivas, Anse Dawes, Charley Gatworth, Mohammed Matsui, and four other engineers, Ludvyckson, Gomez, Karanja and Retief—rated as ordinary spacemen for the trip, ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... with their desire to get more. They will arrest, try and convict anybody——. I am always telling these court officers that I never look upon them without gratitude," continued the lawyer, "because it is due to their kindness that I, you and all of us are not in jail. To deprive any one of us of all civil rights and send him to Siberia is the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importunate remembrances, or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door! Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into jail and out again, and sinned and repented; and loved and suffered; and lived and died scores of years ago. Peace be with him! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle: let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Dead Man's Elbow, the place where they afterward captured Luke Redman, or veered around until they ended in the very spot Tom did not want to go, the town of Burton, which was the only place in the county that could boast of a jail. It was dangerous to attempt to pass from one ridge to another, for the bottom was covered with a bed of mud in which a horseman would sink out of sight. Tom speculated upon this as he walked along, and although ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon

... that they had come as peaceable citizens and {205} subjects to represent their grievances, and had not expected to be used like a mob and scoundrels; and others, as they went out, shouted to the members of Parliament, "You first pick our pockets, and then send us to jail ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... Stasiek, and wanted to know why he was dragging along as if he were being taken to jail, and didn't talk. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... must remain a prisoner, M'sieu David, It is because I do realize, I shall not tell you why that happened behind the rock, and if you ask me, I shall refuse to talk to you. If I let you go now, you would probably have me arrested and put in jail. So I must keep you until St. Pierre comes. I don't know what to do—except to keep you, and not let you escape until ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... Feb. 5—Horn sentenced to jail for thirty days on the technical charge of injuring property, several windows in Vanceboro having ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... citadel of Teufelsdroeckh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her may thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdroeckh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not literary. These were her Erdbeben (earthquakes), which Teufelsdroeckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... suspicioned who they was at once and by a great stroke, put 'em in with old two-nose. Do you think we are going to put you through for breach of contract and for swiping that money out of the till on the claim it was due you on salary? Nit. Cost too much, take too much time, and you git sent to jail instead of being back in the museum helping draw crowds. We are in for saving time and trouble for you, us, and your employer. To-night you ride out of here for Dubuque, covered up with hay, in the corner of the car carrying ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... build them a court-house, for which they paid him forty-two dollars and fifty cents. In twenty-four days the house was built—one room of rough logs, the jury retiring to any sequestered glade they fancied for their deliberation. They next ordered the building of a jail, which cost just twice as much money as the court-house. Constables and overseers of the poor were appointed, and all the machinery of government prepared for the population which was hourly expected. It was taken for granted that malefactors would come and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... lived here. Their lives were like those of their class: incessant labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses, drinking—God and the distillers only know what; with an occasional night in jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their lives?—of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming the streets to-day?—nothing beneath?—all? So many a political reformer will tell you,—and many a private ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... your harming the boy I'll have you sent to jail," said Dick decidedly. "Run home, boy, and give the money to your mother. If this man troubles you or your mother, go and tell General Putnam, and we will see that the offence ...
— The Liberty Boys Running the Blockade - or, Getting Out of New York • Harry Moore

... Dr. Oleander stalked out of the kitchen and out of the house. Five minutes more, and they heard the sharp rattle of his wheels on the gravel. Then old Peter bolted and locked and put up the chains, and made the lonely farmhouse as much like a jail as bolts and bars could render it. Their situation was so isolated, and they themselves so helpless, that, although there was but little to fear, these precautionary ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... felt, for one night I worked for more than two hours on what, to me, was a difficult problem, and when at last I had it solved the manifestations of joy caused consternation to the family and damage to the furniture. I never was in jail for any length of time, but I think I know, from my experience with that problem, just how a prisoner feels when he is set free. The big out-of-doors must seem inexpressibly good to him. My neighbor John taught me how to spray my trees, and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, adopted the strong measure of suddenly capturing many hundreds of Sansias, a troublesome criminal tribe, in the Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Aligarh Districts. Some of the prisoners were sent to a special jail, or reformatory, called a 'settlement', at Sultanpur in Oudh, and the others were drafted off to various landlords' estates. These latter were supposed to devote themselves to agriculture. The editor, as Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, effected the capture of more than seven hundred ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... sent for McGregor and offered to give him charge of his case. When the young lawyer refused he was insistent. In a cell at the county jail they talked it over. By the door stood a guard watching them. McGregor peered into the half darkness and said what he thought should be said. "You are in a hole," he began. "You don't want me, you want a big ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... Saint George prevail Over the Dragon? Maybe in the time When England knew not poverty, nor crime, Described by Cobbett, who would not go bail For falsehood, nor let truth remain in jail. It must, then, have renewed life from its slime, For, oh! through deeds, that turn the blood to chyme And eyes white inward, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... been considered about as contemptuously as playing the fiddle, though admitted to be less dangerous than family card-playing. It was estimated that a novel-reader was confirming his indolence, and in danger of coming to the poor-house; a fiddler was prophesied to get into jail for vagrancy or larceny; while a card-player had entered a path that might lead as far as the gallows and comprehend all the crimes. This opinion still largely exists in towns and country-sides. We find it maintaining itself even in large cities, among ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison

... New Englandish aspect; and are told that it has twice been nearly destroyed by fire, even in modern times; therefore but few of the quaint buildings remain. Some of these are picturesque and interesting, the one combining jail and court house being a feature of the main street. The window of one of the cells faces the street; and the prisoner's friends sit on the steps without, whiling away the tedium ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... your courtesy is very greatly appreciated. I only hope we will arrive in jail or somewhere soon where I can get some sleep. I'm ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... storm lasted. "He never does cut loose with his gun when he's drunk. If I arrested him, I'd have to take him clear up to Garbin—and I ain't got time. And it wouldn't be nothin' but a charge uh disturbin' the peace, when I got him there. Y'oughta have a jail in Sunset, like I've been telling yuh right along. Can't expect a man to stop his work just to take a man to jail—not for anything ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... all your life, and now you say it's all my fault the least little thing that happens! It was for your sake that I stopped you; you know it was. You couldn't carry out any such crazy scheme. Betty's almost of age, and if those trustees should find out what you had threatened, you would be in jail for life, and goodness knows what would ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... to prove it." Mr. Leicester looked very uncomfortable. His master continued: "I have known it this ten months, yet you are none the worse for 't. Now, why do I keep you here, that any other gentleman in my place would send to Carlisle jail on a justice's warrant?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... "In an orphan asylum?" he gasped. He knew asylums only through the experiences of Oliver Twist, and if his father had said "in jail," the words would ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... jail, in order, by his father's command, to attempt to form a marriage beset with difficulties with Mademoiselle de Marignan, a rich heiress of one of the greatest families of Provence, he displayed, like a wrestler, all kinds of stratagems and daring schemes of policy in the small theater ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... they'd never hev got the schoolhouse done after we rode the contractor out uv the Flat on one of his own boards. Besides, some uv 'em might think we wuz rubbin' uv it in, an' next thing you know'd they'd be buildin' us a jail." ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... spring on their way to the retreating army, their boasting met with an incredulous denial, which soon led to their summary arrest as chicken-stealers and public enemies. Confined in the insecure Marlborough jail, one of them speedily escaped, and reached a scouting-party of British cavalry, which, by order of Cockburn, returned to Upper Marlborough, roused Dr. Beanes out of his bed at midnight, and conveyed him to ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter

... solicitors, and at great length with the curiously calm, ironly-resolved Lady Shillito herself. The evidence was too much against her for him to prevent her being committed for trial and lodged in reasonably comfortable quarters in Newcastle jail, or for the Grand Jury to find no true bill of indictment. But between these stages in the process and the actual trial for murder in February, 1909, David worked hard and accumulated conclusive evidence (with Rossiter's help) to prove ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... was that Dick found himself without a companion, and he went day by day bitterly about thinking how hard it was that he should be suspected and ill-treated for trying to spare Tom the agony of having his father denounced and dragged off to jail. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... she has stolen him—she has committed a real theft. And, personally, I should prefer to know her had she stolen money. You can jail a man who steals your watch, but the girl who steals a man's heart away from his sweetheart walks free, and uncondemned even—to their shame be it spoken—by those who know what she ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... public. In fact, had he been on the bench he would probably have acquitted the human derelict who, in despair, had appropriated the prime necessary of life, and sent the over-fed, conscienceless coal baron to jail. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... over with facts and figures. Then I fired a volley of candid details as to the manner in which city and State officials had recently betrayed the public's interests. Lastly, I discharged at "Standard Oil" a broadside which my attorneys and friends assured me meant jail on a libel charge. I put my banking-house and my personal guarantee behind the old and new loans, and proceeded to roll up my sleeves in the stock-market. I got results at once. A change became apparent in public sentiment—the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... Colony was made a royal appendage, and Sir Edmund Andros, a political hack under James II., was made Governor of New England. He reigned under great difficulties for three years, and then suddenly found himself in jail. The jail was so arranged that he could not get out, and so the Puritans now quietly resumed their ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... Gael", in the manner of a racial dispossession, belongs to "The Lady of the Lake", not to sober history. All Scotland, indeed, has now, in one sense, been "rent by the Saxon" from the Celt. "Let no one doubt the civilization of these islands," wrote Dr. Johnson, in Skye, "for Portree possesses a jail." The Highlands and islands have been the last portions of Scotland to succumb to Anglo-Saxon influences; that the Lowlands formed an earlier victim does not prove that their racial complexion is different. The incident of which we have ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... to make me a 'scapegoat'—to railroad me to jail, in fact. But I have one good friend, at least—my uncle, Professor Dimp. You all doubtless know him, and know what a really fine old fellow he is," ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... various members of his family,—most of them from a brother, who purports to have been a deck-hand in the coasting and steamboat trade between Charleston and other ports; others from female relations; one from his father, in which he inquires how long his son has been in jail, and when the trial is to come on,—the offence, however, of which he was accused, not being indicated. But from the tenor of his brother's letters, it would appear that he was a small farmer in the interior of South Carolina, sending butter, eggs, and poultry to be ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... all, enough of his experience to electrify everybody. He told the story well; he even made known the value of his diamond stock; mercilessly he pilloried the two blindfolded bandits. When he drove to the jail the running boards of his car were jammed with inquisitive citizens, and those who could not find footing thereon followed at a run, laughing, shouting, acclaiming him ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... throw this fellow in your car and land him in jail. I'll make a charge against him," ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... authorized by bishops of the Established Church, and Bunyan was one of the first to be called to account. When ordered to hold no more meetings he refused to obey, saying that when the Lord called him to preach salvation he would listen only to the Lord's voice. Then he was thrown into Bedford jail. During his imprisonment he supported his family by making shoe laces, and wrote Grace Abounding ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... to the rioters in Kent, lads. Last night I heard that a message had arrived, saying that they had entered Rochester, broken open the jail, and released not only those held there for non-payment of taxes, but malefactors; that they had been joined by the rabble of the town, had slain several notaries and lawyers, and torn up all parchments, deeds, and registers; had ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... tree, the forest rovers had their trysting place, the weather was never too warm. The unoccupied house became transformed into Nottingham castle, and was never approached without delicious thrills of terror. Excitement ran high on the day when Robin was released from the jail—otherwise a small rustic arbor—by his ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard

... bomb, whether done by a secret emissary, or by a sympathizer with labor, proved the lever which the propertied classes had been feverishly awaiting. Spies, Fielding and their comrades were at once cast into jail; the newspapers invented wild yarns of conspiracies and midnight plots, and raucously demanded the hanging of the leaders. The trifling formality of waiting until their guilt had been proved was not considered. The most significant event, however, was the secret meeting of about three ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... he hovers between the two; hopes in the middle of despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old de Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring and Jailor, all three, such as they may ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... precaution of securing his name, together with his particular office and designation in the prison, I parted from him as if to go home, but in fact to resume my sad roamings up and down the precincts of the jail. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... better than being locked up in jail. Are you children," Donaldson exploded, "that you ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett



Words linked to "Jail" :   incarcerate, law, put away, correctional institution, holding cell, jurisprudence, hoosegow, hoosgow, workhouse, jailhouse, lockup, house of correction, bastille, detain, confine, poky, lag



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