A ticket given by a railway, an express company, &c., as a temporary receipt for a piece of baggage: see quot. 1861. Hence, to check baggage, to give up one’s checks, &c. Tickets used in theatres were called “checks” a century ago:

        Hark! the check-taker moody silence breaks,
And, bawling “Pit full,” gives the check he takes.
‘Rejected Addresses.’    

1

1847.  They will deny the receipt of a check, and exact the fare again.—Illustrated London News, Sept. 4. (N.E.D.)

2

1848.  Ses he—“Sir, giv me yer checks for yer baggage, and I’ll take ye to the Exchange Hotel, a very good house, sir.”—W. T. Thompson, ‘Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel,’ p. 58 (Phila.).

3

1848.  When they ax’d me for my checks I was deaf and dum, and couldn’t understand a word they sed…. I gin him my checks, and in he went for my trunks.—Id., p. 109.

4

1860.  Douglas men, will you follow Little Sandy Rives into Black Republicanism, for he has taken his ticket and checked his baggage through?—Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 6, p. 1/5.

5

1860.  The Senator would like to know what we have got to do with checking baggage. I think we have everything to do with the public’s comfort and convenience.—Mr. Cameron of Pa., U.S. Senate, Dec. 21: Cong. Globe, p. 179.

6

1861.  The whole of my luggage, except a large bag, was taken charge of by a man at the New York side of the ferry, who “checked it through” to the capital—giving me a slip of brass with a number corresponding with a brass ticket for each piece.—W. H. Russell, ‘My Diary, North and South,’ March 25.

7

1871.  

        Whar have you been for the last three year
  That you have n’t heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
  The night of the Prairie Belle?
John Hay, ‘Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle.’    
  [Mr. de Vere is in error as to the meaning. Bludso’s journey was ended. He died, and, dying, “passed in his checks.”] See also Appendix IX.

8