jail fever

British  

noun

1. a former name for typhus, once a common disease in jails

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

jail fever

Among the possibilities mentioned were jail fever, camp fever, eruptive military fever, and autumnal fever.

From "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" by Jim Murphy

As the spring advanced, the men, contrary to my expectation, became more desponding, and the Typhus fever, or rather the jail fever, appeared among them.

From A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. Late A Surgeon On Board An American Privateer, Who Was Captured At Sea By The British, In May, Eighteen Hundred And Thirteen, And Was Confined First, At Melville Island, Halifax, Then At Chatham, In England ... And Last, At Dartmoor Prison. Interspersed With Observations, Anecdotes And Remarks, Tending To Illustrate The Moral And Political Characters Of Three Nations. To Which Is Added, A Correct Engraving Of Dartmoor Prison, Representing The Massacre Of American Prisoners, Written By Himself. by Waterhouse, Benjamin

"I understood that he died of a jail fever, caught at the Assizes, where he was serving on—what do you call it?"

From Lady Good-for-Nothing by Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas, Sir

But, while these epidemics were thus checked in London, others developed by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both there and elsewhere, and of these perhaps the most fearful was the jail fever.

From History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by White, Andrew Dickson

He had caught the jail fever, which had long raged in the Carcel de la Corte, where I was imprisoned. 

From George Borrow The Man and His Books by Thomas, Edward