or collegian, college chum, subs. (thieves’).—The inmate of a prison.—[See COLLEGE.]
1743. R. NORTH, The Life of Lord Guildford, I., 123. His beginnings were debauched, and his study and first practice in the gaol. For having been one of the fiercest town rakes and spent more than he had of his own, his case forced him upon that expedient for a lodging: and there he … busied himself with the cases of his fellow-COLLEGIATES.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1836. DICKENS, Pickwick Papers (about 1827), p. 369 (ed. 1857). ‘I say—do you expect anybody this morning? Three men—devilish gentlemanly fellows—have been asking after you downstairs, and knocking at every door on the hall flight: for which they’ve been most infernally blown up by the COLLEGIANS that had the trouble of opening ’em.’
1859. G. W. MATSELL, Vocabulum; or, The Rogue’s Lexicon, COLLEGE CHUM: a fellow-prisoner.
1884. DICKENS. [Quoted in Supplement to Annandale’s ed. of Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary.] It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his door at night enclosing half-a-crown … for the father of the Marshalsea, ‘with the compliments of a COLLEGIAN taking leave.’
LADIES’ COLLEGE, subs. (general).—A brothel. For synonyms, see NANNY-SHOP.
