ticket-of-leave

It is being improved by convicts in dull red kimonos printed with Chinese characters, who correspond with our ticket-of-leave men, as they are working for wages in the employment of contractors and farmers, and are under no other restriction than that of always wearing the prison dress.

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

Chinese and apt-handed Lascars, of expirees and ticket-of-leave men, of Jews, Turks and other infidels.

Australia Felix 2003

The province of Victoria not only refused to admit them, but passed a law to prevent any ticket-of-leave men from other provinces from entering her territories.

In Search of the Castaways 2003

And really it happened very often that, for a month or so, some ticket-of-leave client, under the strict surveillance of the

Creatures That Once Were Men, and other stories 2003

Another Mrs Bellfield was not impossible; and what, if instead of being a real captain at all, he should be a returned ticket-of-leave man!

Can You Forgive Her? 1993

Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and so, partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances, partly from the faults of others, they found themselves outlaws, ticket-of-leave men, or what you will in that line — in short, dangerous parties — and lived the sort of hand-to-mouth, wild, reckless life which such parties generally have to put up with.

Tom Brown's Schooldays Hughes, Thomas, 1822-1896 1971

In 1935 he was finally given a much-publicized ticket-of-leave, as parole was called in those days.

National Parole—Its Successes and Its Failures 1966

A ticket-of-leave was given to each convict who consented to join the Chilean army.

Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania Jewett Castello Gilson

I would not have any first offenders against property in prison, I would punish them as ticket-of-leave men.

Six Years in the Prisons of England A Merchant - Anonymous

I am not a believer in the craze for "ticket-of-leave men" and "converted prize-fighters" to preach to the poor and the outcast.

Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary W. P. Livingstone