A spunging house; a public house kept by sheriff’s officers, to which they convey the persons they have arrested, where they practise every species of imposition and extortion with impunity. Also houses kept by agents or crimps, who enlist, or rather trepan, men to serve the East India or African company as soldiers.
Definition taken from The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, originally by Francis Grose.
Lock Hospital * Lockeram-jawedNathan Bailey's 1736 Dictionary of canting and thieving slang
John S. Farmer's collection of canting songs and slang rhymes