(Beside obvious application to any dark hole or deep cell:)
1. Mil. The punishment cell or lock-up in a barracks; the guard-room. (The official designation till 1868.)
(The name has become historic, in connection with the horrible catastrophe in 1756 at the black hole of the barracks in Fort William, Calcutta, into which 146 Europeans were thrust for a whole night, of whom only 23 survived till the morning.)
1758. J. Z. Holwell, Black Hole Calcut., 8–9. The guard … ordered us to go into the room at the southernmost end of the barracks, commonly called the Black-Hole prison.
1758. J. Blake, Plan Mar. Syst., 49. What happened lately in the black-hole at Bengal.
1816. C. James, Mil. Dict. (ed. 4), 53. Black-hole, a place in which soldiers may be confined by the commanding officer…. In this place they are generally restricted to bread and water.
1844. Regul. & Ord. Army, 121. Confinement to the Black Hole … to be reserved for cases of Drunkenness, Riot, Violence, or Insolence to Superiors. Ibid. (1868), ¶ 789, note. The term lock up room and black hole is to be abolished.
2. gen. A place of confinement for punishment. (Often with allusion to that at Calcutta.)
1831. A. A. Watts, House-Hunting, in Pocket Mag., I. 258. The bed-chambers (the black-holes of her establishment).
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, ii. Do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to the black hole?
3. The deep dark pool under a waterfall; as ‘the Black Hole at Aira Force.’
Hence Black-hole v., to confine to the black-hole.
1866. Pall Mall Gaz., 25 Oct., 9/2. He was blackholed for twelve hours.
