See QUEEN’S PICTURES.
TO SIT FOR ONE’S PORTRAIT, verb. phr. (prison).—See quot.
1837. DICKENS, Pickwick Papers (1857), 339. Here they stopped, while the tipstaff delivered his papers; and here Mr. Pickwick was apprised that he would remain until he had undergone the ceremony, known to the initiated, as ‘SITTING FOR YOUR PORTRAIT.’ … Mr. Pickwick complied with the invitation, and sat himself down, when Mr. Weller, who stationed himself at the back of the chair, whispered that the sitting was merely another term for undergoing an inspection by the different turnkeys, in order that they might know prisoners from visitors.
