What is "turnkey"

Usage examples of "turnkey".

He therefore returned by the subterraneous gallery, and arrived in time to hear the exclamations of the turnkey, who called out for help.

Mary waited until her fellow inmates were drunk and distracted and then she bribed a turnkey to have a tinsmith visit her.

The imps had found the remains of the scouts that had gone through the Turnkey passage.

We will, therefore, pass on to the entrance of the turnkey, who acquainted Jones that there was a lady without who desired to speak with him when he was at leisure.

While they both remained speechless, the turnkey entered the room, and, without taking any notice of what sufficiently discovered itself in the faces of them both, acquainted Jones that a man without desired to speak with him.

Two turnkeys are arriving from the Lord of Thieftakers to escort the queen to a safer place.

I was delighted to hear that my infamous turnkey was outside, for since his explanation of the iron collar I had looked an him with loathing.

At this the rascal told the turnkey to give me a taste of the lash, and after this had been done I was set at liberty.

Conyngham remembered then that he had a sheriffs order, so we all trooped across to Newgate to get a squint at the chap in the condemned cell, and I remember how that boozy, rowdy party fell silent once we were in Newgate Yard, with the dank black walls crowding in on either side, our steps sounding hollow in the stone passages, breathing short and whispering while the turnkey grinned horribly and rolled his eyes to give Conyngham his money's worth.

A numerous world, however, for although it had at first been considered that half a dozen convicts would serve as a sufficient blind to cover Mrs Wogan's transportation - to make it seem something other than the most exceptional measure that in fact it was - some of the other bodies or departments concerned had been unable to resist adding to the number, so that it had grown to well above a score, with a superintendent, a surgeon, and a chaplain, besides the usual guards or turnkeys, to look after them.

Now the unfortunate, pompous, brutal, pretentious fellow was dead, and that meant that Jack would either have to shuffle the responsibility for the convicts off on to the useless half -witted illiterate turnkeys or assume it himself.

I asked the turnkeys - God-damned half-baked whoreson lubbers - and all they could tell me was that Barrington, the pickpocket, you remember, was allowed to mess with the bosun.

During the first week the log had recorded the burial of fourteen convicts, the two remaining turnkeys, and a loblolly boy, all of whom had lived or worked forward, and it had recorded them in Needham's fine copperplate: now it was Jack's far rougher hand that wrote the daily list, for his clerk had gone over the side with two cannon-balls to carry him down and his hammock for a shroud, the first of those abaft the mast to die of the disease.

Seeing a stranger, escorted by two turnkeys holding torches and accompanied by two soldiers, and to whom the governor spoke bareheaded, Dantes, who guessed the truth, and that the moment to address himself to the superior authorities was come, sprang forward with clasped hands.

Other turnkeys came, and then was heard the regular tramp of soldiers.