Green’s Dictionary of Slang

lodgings, temporary accommodation, thus these diggins, the place of which one speaks (with no sense of accomdation).

1838		J.C. Neal Charcoal Sketches (1865) 119: Look here, Ned, I reckon it’s about time we should go to our diggings; I am dead beat.
1846		R. Carlton Old Purchase 29: Gaddy [...] had been forced to ‘make himself skerse in these here diggins’.
1854		F. St. Clair Six Days in the Metropolis 85: I’m off in the first train tomorrow morning, and I sha’nt been seen in these diggings again.
1857		T.H. Gladstone Englishman in Kansas 51: Just let me [...] give you a word of caution, which you may find useful, now that you’re setting foot in these here Western diggins.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 101: Durned if I’ll leave these diggings.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter I 29: ‘These diggings I like, and these diggings I mean to stick by’.
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 285: My best advice to you, as a friend, is to close up yer crib, and make yourself scarce round these diggin’s.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Jan. 1/4: In a late issue it spoke of Rev. C. G. Bradshaw, the eminent Methodist divine of those ‘diggins,’ as follows: – ‘He can run a horse-race, and can make it hot for his opponents in a footrace [...] and at the end of the week preach a very good sermon withal.’.
1886		S. Watson Wops the Waif 2/2: I shan’t want my diggins (apartments) no longer, so yer can put up a card ‘to let’.
1887		‘’Arry on His Critics’ in Punch 17 Dec. 280/1: I wish the St. James’s young man / Could drop into my diggings permiskus; he’s welcome.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 25 Nov. 7/6: If I knew where the baggar put up we’d drive round to his diggings and drop him there.
1898		Binstead & Wells A Pink ’Un and a Pelican 174: Now at my diggings in Jermyn Street dinner’s always served at half-past seven to the tick.
1900		Marvel XIV:344 June 13: I will be your friend [...] find you comfortable diggings.
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 72: All sensible persons [...] elect, on their second visit, to put up in ‘private’ diggings.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 9 Nov. 6/7: I remonstrated with the friend who had brought me to these strange diggings, pointing out the discomfort of a place in which no washing was allowed.
1910		Sporting Times 1 Jan. 4/1: On Boxing Day you shuffle round your diggings to see if on your shelves are some nicknacks which [...] may pass muster as new Year gifts.
1915		H.L. Wilson Ruggles of Red Gap (1917) 241: I quite forgot the Jackson chap till it was time for him to drive me back to these diggings.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 612: My diggings are quite close in the vicinity.
1923		N. Anderson Hobo 25: Then he is sent out of camp with orders not to show up in any of the diggings along the line for it would be murder if anyone should spot him.
1926		M. West Sex (1997) I ii: Oh, the diggings ain’t so bad. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.
1929		C.G. Gordon Crooks of the Und. 172: I obtained respectable diggings.
1939		in W.C. Fields By Himself (1974) 333: You go and get yourself diggin’s up the street.
1944		‘F. Bonnamy’ A Rope of Sand (1947) 30: We’d better make for our diggings.
1995		(con. 1860s) P. Ackroyd Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem 77: What about diggings, Lizzie?