up the river vs workhouse

up the river

prep

  • To prison. 

workhouse

verb

  • To place (a person) in the workhouse (institution for the poor). 

noun

  • A prison in which the sentence includes manual labour. 

  • An institution for the poor homeless, funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work. 

How often have the words up the river and workhouse occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )