[WATCH sb.]
1. A house in which a watch or guard is stationed.
1482. Cely Papers (Camden), 111. [You] woll hawe yowre wull howssyd in yowre wull howsse be the est wache howsse.
1530. Palsgr., 287/1. Watche howse, lieu de guayet.
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 108. Vpon the walles euery night doe watch fifteene men in watch houses, for euery watch house fiue men.
1629. Aldeburgh Rec., in N. & Q., 12th Ser. VIII. 426/1. To John Cooke in p[aymen]t for a wache house set up at the beacon … 01 00 00.
1739. Labelye, Short Acc. Piers Westm. Bridge, 70. Useful Buildings, such as … Watch-houses, &c.
1775. Romans, Hist. Florida, App. 72. You will see … a watch-house (nick-named a fort) on St. Rosa Island.
1871. L. Stephen, Playgr. Eur. (1894), iii. 72. Four of these [summits] … stand like watch-houses on the edge of the cliffs.
1880. A. McKay, Hist. Kilmarnock (ed. 4), 17. One of these loop-holed recesses [in Dean Castle] had been perhaps used as a watch-house in times of emergency.
1881. E. Ingersoll, Oyster-Industry, 249. Watch-house.—A shanty built on the shore, or near the planted oyster-beds, from which they may be guarded (Massachusetts).
2. A house used as a station for municipal night-watchmen, in which the chief constable of the night sits to receive and detain in custody till the morning any disorderly persons brought in by the watchmen. (Now only U.S. and Colonial.)
1716. Gay, Trivia, II. 491. Where statues breath’d, the works of Phidias’ hands, A wooden pump, or lonely watch-house stands.
1731–2. Norwick Mercury, 11–8 March, 1/2. Several of the Footmen and Chairmen were carried to St. James’s Watch-house, and Yesterday Morning were examined before Justice Lambert.
1774. Ann. Reg., 123. The mob pulled down the watch-house, and rescued the prisoners.
1835. Act 5 & 6 Will. IV., c. 76 § 78. To deliver any person so apprehended into the Custody of the Constable … at the nearest Watch-house.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes, vi. Here are The Tombs once more. The city watch-house is a part of the building.
1845. D. Jerrold, St. Giles, i. The watchmen bore the mother to the watch-house.
1876. Emerson, Lett. & Social Aims, i. 40. This unwritten play in fifty acts, composed by the dullest snorer on the floor of the watch-house.
1919. Melbourne Argus, 1 Sept., 6. Detectives … arrested George Whitney … and locked him up at the City Watchhouse.
attrib. 1711. Lond. Gaz., No. 4890/3. The Unicorn over-against the Watch-house Door.
1859. K. Cornwallis, Panorama New World, I. 87. Inside there were several detectives and two watchhouse keepers at the books.
