Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a room in the King’s Bench (or any other) prison where one could buy drink illicitly.

[1546		J. Heywood Proverbs I Ch. xi: That benchwhistler, (quoth I) is a pinchpeny].
[1555		J. Heywood Epigrams upon Proverbs cliii: Thou art a benche whystler, a shryll whystlyng wenche; / But how long hast thou whystled in the kynges benche, / I have whystled in the kynges benche (Gefrey) / As longe as thou hast marcht, in the Marshalsey].
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: Whistling Shop. Rooms in the King’s Bench and Fleet prisons where drams are privately sold.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 384: It is a complete school, and all the heads of the Whistling-Shops are put together to decide upon any knotty case.
1836–7		Dickens Pickwick Papers (1999) 609: ‘A whistling-shop, Sir, is where they sell spirits.’ Mr Job Trotter briefly explained here, that all persons, being prohibited under heavy penalties from conveying spirits into debtors’ prisons, and such commodities being highly prized by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein, it had occurred to some speculative turnkey to connive, for certain lucrative considerations, at two or three prisoners retailing the favourite article of gin, for their own profit and advantage.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 135/2: Whistling Shop, a public house in a Prison.
1867		M. Lemon Golden Fetters I 291: The Captain [...] returned with two bottles of excellent whisky, which he had obtained from some interdicted ‘whistling shop.’.
1894		G.A. Sala Things I Have Seen II 67: The existence of a whistling shop, such as we read of in the description of the Fleet in ‘Pickwick,’ was [...] an impossibility.

2. any illicit drinking house.

1822		Tom & Jerry 48: Let tempests whistle as they will , / Our whistling shops will drown them still; / A yard of tape / Will prove the cape, / And drive each thought of care away.
1832		Satirist (London) 1 July 210/3: Let’s drink success to ginwine malt and hops, / And whistle to Old Nick the ‘whistling shops’.
1873		Sl. Dict. 339: Whistling-shop a place in which spirits are sold without a licence.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 95: Whistling Stop [sic], an unlicensed drinking shop.