Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a workhouse, esp. the St Giles’s workhouse.

1718		C. Hitchin Regulator 19: The Spinning Ken, alias Bridewell.
1768		(con. 1710–25) Tyburn Chronicle II in Groom (1999) xxvi: The Spinning Ken Bridewell.
1786		Whole Art of Thieving n.p.: The spinning ken bridewell.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 47: SPINIKIN, a workhouse.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 223: SPINIKEN, a workhouse.
1866		Bradford Obs. 6 Dec. 6/6: A big burly ‘navvy’ [...] asked [...] if I had never been in a ‘spinnaken’ before.
1873		Sl. Dict. 304: Spiniken St. Giles’s Workhouse. ‘Lump,’ Marylebone Workhouse. ‘Pan,’ St. Pancras.
1881		Newcastle Courant 2 Dec. 6/6: ‘Stall your mug and let a poor traveller be.’ ‘Poor traveller! priggish spinikindosser’.
1882		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 13 Oct. 6/6: There’s a little ‘spinnakin’ a mile and a half out of town; we’ll go there.
1891		Sunderland Dly Echo 12 Aug. 1/5: Vagrant ward regulations have been so arranged that the tramp avoids the ‘spinniken’ just as he keeps out of the clutches of the ‘methony,’ or policeman .
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 82: My mother was a needie all her life after he left her, and after she died I was shoved into the Spinnick until I was thirteen.