subs. (old).—Money procured by the practice of chumming together; but various extensions of meaning appear to have been in vogue at different periods.—See quots. [The practice alluded to in quot. 1777, was the rough music made with pokers, tongs, sticks, and saucepans, for which ovation the initiated prisoner had to pay or ‘fork out’ a certain sum of money, or submit to being deprived of its equivalent from among his personal effects; otherwise called CHUMMING UP.]
1777. HOWARD, State of the Prisons in England and Wales, quoted in J. Ashton’s The Fleet, p. 295. A cruel custom obtains in most of our Gaols, which is that of the prisoners demanding of a new comer GARNISH, FOOTING, or (as it is called in some London Gaols) CHUMMAGE.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. CHUMMAGE, money paid by the richer sort of prisoners in the Fleet and King’s Bench, to the poorer for their share of a room…. A prisoner who can pay for being alone, chuses two poor chums, who for a stipulated price, called CHUMMAGE, give up their share of the room, and sleep on the stairs, or as the term is, ruff it.
1836. DICKENS, Pickwick Papers, xlii. The regular CHUMMAGE is two-and-sixpence.
1859. G. A. SALA, Twice Round the Clock (1861), 103. The time-honoured system of CHUMMAGE, or quartering two or more collegians in one room, and allowing the richest to pay his companions a stipulated sum to go out and find quarters elsewhere.
Also used as an adjective.
1836. DICKENS, Pickwick Papers, ch. xlii., p. 364. You’ll have a CHUMMAGE ticket upon twenty-seven in the third, and them as is in the room will be your chums.
