disorderly house

English

Noun

disorderly house (plural disorderly houses)

1. (now historical) A brothel.
   • 1906 January–October, Joseph Conrad, chapter II, in The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, London: Methuen & Co., […], published 1907, →OCLC; The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Collection of British Authors; 3995), copyright edition, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1907, →OCLC, page 15:

     But there was also about him an indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised: [...] the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of gambling hells and disorderly houses [...].

   • 1981 August 22, Larry Goldsmith, “Theater Sex Charges Dropped”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 6, page 1:

     Pekara, along with Officers Robert Margelewski and Roger O'Brien then ordered the theater lights turned on and began making arrests. Sixteen men were charged as inmates of a disorderly house and the cashier was arrested as the keeper of a disorderly house. The man from Elgin was arrested on charges of soliciting an act of prostitution.

   • 2009, Dan Cruikshank, The Secret History of Georgian London, Random House, page 5:

     Her crime was less dramatic: she was found guilty of keeping a disorderly house by the Westminster magistrate Sir John Gonson […].