A document granting certain concessions, especially leave, to a prisoner or convict who had served part of their time.
as modifier ticket-of-leave men
Example sentencesExamples
- After 19 years on the chain gang, Jean Valjean finds that the ticket-of-leave he must display condemns him to be an outcast.
- There were only just over three hundred probation and re-convicted men left for whom employment had to be found for the next few years until they got their ticket of leave.
- Conservative critics bemoaned the pernicious consequences of softhearted penal policies and demanded stricter control of ticket-of-leave men.
- Once freed, ex-cons were expected to check in their ticket of leave at the tradesman's entrance and work for their betters.
- The ticket of leave was initially a device to reduce the number of convicts on the store.