accommodation house

English

Noun

accommodation house (plural accommodation houses)

1. (historical) A building offering board and lodging to travellers.
2. (historical, euphemistic) A building offering rooms to prostitutes and their clients for a short period in exchange for payment.
   • 1883, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of Indiana, Indiana: Supreme Court, page 276:

     Subsequently, being recalled, he testified that "the phrase 'is keeping an accommodation-house,' when applied to a woman, in Jasper county, in his opinion, mean the same as a house of ill-fame, or house of prostitution." On cross-examination, he said, "the phrase 'is keeping an accommodation-house,' when applied to a woman, means the same in Jasper county as it would in Newton county, or anywhere else. […] "

   • 1972, Michael Pearson, The Age of Consent: Victorian Prostitution and Its Enemies, page 27:

     […] it provides what is now accepted as a clearly authentic and valuable record of the Victorian sexual underworld and the people who frequented it. His descriptions are often vivid, such as his account of a visit to an accommodation house one summer morning […]