The Spectator

Who came up with ‘lockdown’?

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issue 07 November 2020

The start of lockdown

The earliest known use of ‘lockdown’ in its current sense was in a 1973 story in the Fresno Bee, a Californian newspaper, referring to prisoners being kept in their cells after a knife attack. Despite apparently giving the world the concept, not all Fresno locals seemed happy to be placed in lockdown in April.

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