Guard-house" once = "jail / gaol"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED distinguishes the two definitions, but the block of citations (from 1592) is not very helpful. Most or all look like "a building for the accommodation of a (military) guard" (def. a) rather than "a building in which prisoners are detained under guard" (def. b).

  The "place of confinement" sense has been/ was common - if informal - in the U.S. army since before WWI at least.  I recall an overseas song from the immediate post-Kipling era of about 1900 (you young whelps) with the words

  "Now I'm in the guard-house a-waiting my discharge.
  To hell with the sergeant and the corporal of the guard !"

  I'm less certain about usage during the Civil War, but my impression is that "guard house" was more frequent then than "stockade," which suggests to me something more elaborate.

  Here's an ex. ref. to the Mexican War of 1846-48:

  1847, in J. Jacob Oswandel _Notes of the Mexican War_  (Phila.: [pvtly. ptd.], 1885) 174: Sunday, May 30, 1847.- This morning a non-commissioned officer was put in the
  guard-house for passing soldiers on spurious passes.

  I believe that this sort of "guard-house" was originally just the guards' quarters enlarged to include a common cell for prisoners awaiting trial.  This obvious set-up could easily date back to the 16th C.

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Subject: Guard-house" once = "jail / gaol"?
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Jon Lighter posted;

ex., from 1814 :

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/facsimiles/1810s/181407060006.html

"_A_....The other man, I saw the blow coming, I stooped my head, and
in stooping
I fell. Ashton directly collared me; he called me a b - y sod, and
said he would take me to the _guard-house_.
"_Q._ He called you a sod; did you know what he meaned by that
expression - _A_. I know now; I did not at that time. He said he would
take me to the _guard-house_."

I've long wondered why it is that civilians often refer to the what we
(ex-)GI's know as the "stockade" as the "guard(-)house." Making a WAG
on the basis of Jon's evidence, I'd say that, once upon a time,
"guard(-)house" was simply another term for "jail / gaol." In the
current military - rather, when I was in the military a half-century
ago - the guard house was the building or, sometimes, just a room, in
which the privates of the guard were confined, for the convenience of
the sergeant of the guard, when they were not actively engaged in
guarding: "walking their posts from flank to flank and deferring to
anyone above their rank." The equivalent of a civilian jail or prison
is / was? the stockade.

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

Dope wil get you through times of no money better than money will get
you through times of no dope.
-----
-Free-Wheeling Franklin

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