time up the river

He had no thought of a melodramatic plunge, but some blind instinct led him to fling hat and coat into his boat, and row away with all his might, making better time up the river than he had done in many a race.

It is Sing Sing, the spot where Willie Sutton spent time for robbing banks, where Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair for spying and where Hollywood gangsters like James Cagney were dispatched to spend time “up the river.”

But we had had a magnificent time up the river; all hands were satisfied, and ready for another cruise.

Most of them had "done time" up the river and come back more hardened than they went, full of new tricks always, which they were eager to show the boys, to prove that they had not been idle while they were away.

Parading some time up the river they at last debark at Vauxhall, and there pick up Lord Granby, 'arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim'—a tavern at Chelsea frequented by his lordship and other gentlemen of fashion.