spunging-house

plural spunging-houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of sponging-house.

   Miss Jemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters. This one was from a spunging-house: that entreated an advance: another was full of gratitude for Rebecca's reception by the ladies of Chiswick

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter XIX, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC

   2 more examples

   Vanity is the perfection of a Fop; my Huſband had this Excellence, that he valued nothing of Expence, and as his Hiſtory you may be ſure, has very little vveight in it; 'tis enough to tell you, that in about tvvo Years and a Quarter he Broke, and vvas not ſo happy to get over into the Mint, but got into a Spunging-Houſe, being Arreſted in an action too heavy for him to give Bail to, ſo he ſent for me to come to him.

   1722 (indicated as 1721), [Daniel Defoe], The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. […], London: […] W[illiam Rufus] Chetwood, […]; and T. Edling, […], published 1722, →OCLC, page 70

   The inquiry thus made, does his solvency prove dubious? Seizing his person affords no security. In jail, or in a spunging-house, his effects, for every purpose of removal or dissipation, are as much in his power as if he were at home. Secure the effects themselves, all removal, all dissipation is at end.

   1827, John Stuart Mill, editor, Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Epecially Applied to English Practice, from the MSS. of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. IV, Book IX, Chapter VII