What is "jail-birds"

Usage examples of "jail-birds".

Contrast with these the arbiters of their lives and deaths, the potentates of the same quarter who issue the warrants of arrest against them, who pen them in to speculate on them, and who revel at their expense and before their eyes: these consist of the members of the revolutionary committee of the Croix-Rouge, the eighteen convicted rogues and debauchees previously described,[152] ex-cab-drivers, porters, cobblers, street messengers, stevedores, bankrupts, counterfeiters, former or future jail-birds, all clients of the police or alms-house riff-raff.

Nothing disgusts him physically or morally: he embraces Marat,[61] fraternizes with drunkards, congratulates the Septembriseurs, retorts in blackguard terms to the insults of prostitutes, treats reprobates, thieves and jail-birds as equals, - Carra, Westermann, Huguenin, Rossignol and the confirmed scoundrels whom he sends into the departments after the 2nd of September.

The latest decree of the Convention, encouraging, nay, commanding, the union of aristocrats with so-called patriots, had fired the imagination of this nest of jail-birds with thoughts of glorious possibilities.

A man like this d'Herbois --born in the gutter, imbued with every brutish tradition, which generations of jail-birds had bequeathed to him,--would not perhaps fully realize the fact that neither Sir Percy nor Marguerite Blakeney would ever save themselves at the expense of others.

There are not many men whose character could stand up to seven years with only jail-birds as their companions.