A ticket or document giving leave or permission; an order, a permit (rare). Now, in specific use, a licence to be at large after the expiration of part of the sentence, formerly granted to convicts in the Australian colonies; since 1840, the usual colloquial name for an ‘order of licence’ giving a convict his liberty under certain restrictions before his sentence has expired, the proportion remitted being dependent on his conduct and industry.
1732. Acc. Workhouses, 17. That no person presume to go out of the street door without a Ticket of Leave, to return in good order.
1828. P. Cunningham, N. S. Wales (ed. 3), II. 293. Whether in depriving an individual of a ticket of leave, or sentencing him to a penal gang, the periods should be always limited.
1843. Act 6 & 7 Vict., c. 7 (title), An Act to amend the Law affecting transported Convicts with respect to Pardons and Tickets of Leave. Ibid., Permission to such Felons … to employ themselves for their own Benefit (which Permissions are usually called and known by the Name of Tickets of Leave).
1895. Times, 16 Jan., 14/5. A long list of former convictions, beginning in 1852, was proved against the prisoner…. He was now on ‘ticket-of-leave.’
b. attrib. or Comb. (hyphened), as ticket-of-leave holder, man, woman.
1837. J. D. Lang, N. S. Wales, I. 411. The overseer, on well-regulated farms, is generally a ticket-of-leave man or emancipated convict. Ibid., II. 19. A ticket-of-leave holder … is confined to a particular district, and is liable to lose his ticket for various petty misdemeanours.
1862. Lond. Rev., 30 Aug., 178. A great proportion of these crimes were committed by ‘Ticket-of-leave Men.’
1871. Daily News, 25 July. In one of the … most fashionable districts of London many hundreds of domestic servants are ticket-of-leave women.
Hence Ticket-of-leaver, a ticket-of-leave man; Ticket-of-leavism (nonce-wd.), the system or operation of tickets of leave.
1852. Mundy, Our Antipodes, v. (1855), 107. The overseer … may be a hireling convict—emancipist, expirer, or ticket-of-leaver.
1857. Tait’s Mag., XXIV. 41. The atmosphere itself was redolent of ticket-of-leaveism.
1858. R. S. Surtees, Ask Mamma, xlv. The oft-disappointed ticket-of-leaver was again installed in a butler’s pantry.
