Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) Newgate prison, Tothill prison.

1654		New Brawle 11: You know the Whit, and the letter T well enough.
1663		Wandring Whores Complaint 4: Ruth. What newes dost thou hear from the Whit. Wand-wh. Truly I hear there is a very full Collegde of our trade as well as common Thieves .
1676		‘A Newgate ex-prisoner’ A Warning for House-Keepers 5: We bite the Culley of his cole / But we are rubbed unto the Whitt.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Whit Newgate. As five Rum-padders are rub’d in the Darkmans out of the Whit, and are pik’d into the Deusea-vile: Five Highway-men in the night broke Newgate, and are gone into the Countrey.
1703		Hell Upon Earth 6: Wit, Newgate.
1707		J. Shirley Triumph of Wit 194: Five Rum-padders are rubbed in the Darkman out of the Whit [Five Highway-men got away in the night out of Newgate].
1718		C. Hitchin Conduct of Receivers and Thief-Takers 12: They are Three House-Breakers, that are lately come out of the Whit (alias Newgate).
1724		‘John Sheppard’s Last Epistle’ in Dly Jrnl (London) 16 Nov. 1: I then who am now in the Witt, / Does rattle my Darby’s with Pleasure.
1728		T. Walker The Quaker’s Opera II i: And when we come unto the Whit, / Our Darbies to behold [...] we bouze the Water Cold.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. n.p.: the wit, Newgate, New Prison, or Bridewell. The same as Whit.
1754		Scoundrel’s Dict. 18: Newgate – Whit.
1768		(con. 1710–25) Tyburn Chronicle II in Groom (1999) xxvi: The Rhumbo, or the Whit Newgate.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1790		‘The Bowman Prigg’s Farewell’ in Wardroper (1995) 283: He snaffled her clout, poll and tail, / For which he was hiked to the Whit, sir.
c.1800		Song No. 25 Papers of Francis Place (1819) n.p.: To those who are down in the whit / Rattling their darbies with pleasure.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 206: How my bowman he snivelled away, o, / How he broke off all the dubbs in the whitt, / And chivied the darbies in twain, o.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 96: whit A prison. ‘Five gonnoffs were rubbed in the darkmans out of the whit and piked like bulls into grassville,’ five thieves broke out of prison in the night, and ran like locomotives into the country.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 95: Whit, a prison.