Based on the image of sardines in a tin, the colloquial phrase to be packed like sardines, and its variants, mean: to be crowded or confined tightly together.
—Synonyms: (as) thick as herrings and like herrings in a barrel.
A variant of the phrase to be packed like sardines occurred, for example, in a declaration made by the British politician Jeremy Corbyn (born 1949), Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from September 2015 to April 2020—as transcribed in The Bolton News (Bolton, Lancashire, England) of Saturday 22nd April 2017 [page 8, column 2]:
“Seven years of Tory failure and broken promises have left our schools in a terrible state,” the Labour leader said.
“Hundreds of thousands of our children are paying the price, crammed into classrooms like sardines.”
The same metaphor is used in French in the phrase être serrés comme des sardines and variants. The earliest occurrence that I have found is from a description of Brook-Green-Fair, in London, published in Diorama de Londres, ou, Tableau des mœurs britanniques en mil huit cent vingt-deux (Paris: Chez Fr. Louis, & Delaunay, 1823), by Eusèbe de Salle (1796-1873) [page 161]:
Qu’on se figure le brouhaha de plus de vingt mille personnes, entassées comme des sardines, dans une espace de terrein fort étroit.
translation:
Let one imagine the din of more than twenty thousand people, packed like sardines, on a very narrow ground area.
The earliest occurrences of the phrase to be packed like sardines and variants that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From The Cottage Bonnet, published in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction (London, England) of Saturday 4th September 1841 [Vol. 38, No. 1,075, page 155, column 2]:
“Ladies, sit a little to the left, and you gentlemen, draw closer to the ladies. There is still room for another, as the box should contain ten, and there are only nine of you. We must have the complement.”
“The complement!” exclaimed a Quixotte [sic] in length and spareness, “do people come to the theatre to be packed up like sardines […]?”
2-: From The Quaker City; Or, The Monks of Monk-Hall. A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery, and Crime (Philadelphia: Published by the author, 1845), by the U.S. author George Lippard (1822-1854) [Book 3, Chapter 3, page 222, column 2]:
Between the door and the pulpit were seated one dense mass of human beings, male and female, old and young, high and low, rich and poor, packed together, along uncomfortable benches of unpainted pine, like sardines in a tin-box.
3-: From Our Antipodes: Or, Residence and Rambles in the Australasian Colonies. With a Glimpse of the Gold Fields (London: Richard Bentley, 1852), by the British-Army officer Godfrey Charles Mundy (1804-1860) [Vol. 3, Chapter 6, page 191]—the following is from the description of a female penitentiary:
A large ward was allotted to the mid-day sleep of the poor little babes. […] There were a score or so of wooden cribs, in each of which lay two, three, or four innocents, stowed away head and tail, like sardines à l’huile; while others were curling about like a litter of kittens in a basket of straw.
4-: From The Weekly News and Chronicle (London, England) of Saturday 18th June 1853 [No. 876, page 392, column 1]:
A poor woman in the sub-district of St. Mary, St. George’s-in-the-Fields, […] died, according to the report of the coroner’s jury, of “natural death, accelerated by sleeping in a room twelve feet wide and six feet nine inches high, in which fifteen persons slept at the same time.” Why, the hold of the slave-ship, or the Black Hole of Calcutta, was Etesian coolness and Arcadian sweetness combined compared with this “chamber of horrors,” where men, women, and children appear to be packed up like sardines in a tin case, or herrings in a barrel, in their own pickle!!
5-: From Revelations of a Slave Trader; Or, Twenty Years’ Adventures of Captain Canot (London: Richard Bentley, 1854), by Théodore Canot (1804-1860):
When the runners returned from the interior with the slaves required to complete the Areostatico’s cargo, I considered it my duty to the Italian grocer of Regla to dispatch his vessel personally. Accordingly, I returned on board to aid in stowing one hundred and eight boys and girls, the eldest of whom did not exceed fifteen years! As I crawled between decks, I confess I could not imagine how this little army was to be packed or draw breath in a hold but twenty-two inches high! Yet the experiment was promptly made, inasmuch as it was necessary to secure them below in descending the river, in order to prevent their leaping overboard and swimming ashore. I found it impossible to adjust the whole in a sitting posture; but we made them lie down in each other’s laps, like sardines in a can, and in this way obtained space for the entire cargo.
6-: From Ante-Mortem Reflections, published in the Grass Valley Telegraph (Grass Valley, California, USA) of Thursday 3rd August 1854 [Vol. 1, No. 46, page 1, column 4]—reprinted from the Sacramento Union:
Sir:—Before you read this I shall be dead […]. As to burial, give me plenty of room; don’t place me in a crowd, or pack me like sardines.
7-: From Indian Intelligence. Bengal, published in The Bombay Gazette (Bombay, Maharashtra, India) of Tuesday 24th October 1854 [Vol. 14, No. 253, page 1,012, column 2]:
The Railway Train which left the Howrah Station on Tuesday evening last narrowly escaped utter destruction. Several of the carriages went out of the line about half a mile from the Station House at Serampore, in consequence of some mismanagement or negligence. […] The passengers had to walk up to the Serampore station about half a mile from the place where the carriages stopped—those in the trucks were left to shift for themselves, and those in the carriages were packed in the two carriages that were not out of the line, like sardines, and conveyed to Chandernagore, Hooghly, and Pandooah, two hours after the usual time.
8-: From a transcript of the speech made by Captain Bromley during the commemoration, held at Cheadle, Staffordshire, on Monday 5th November 1855, of the Battle of Inkerman, which was fought on Sunday 5th November 1854, during the Crimean War—transcript published in The Staffordshire Advertiser (Stafford, Staffordshire, England) of Saturday 10th November 1855 [page 7, column 2]:
A French officer […], who had gone over the field after the conflict, had expressed to him his unbounded astonishment and admiration at the achievements of the English on that memorable 5th of November, and his belief that none but English troops could have held their ground against such fearful odds. In describing the slaughter, the Frenchman said that the dead bodies lay one over the other “like sardines in a canister, or figs in a drum.”
9-: From Grimaldi; Or, The Life of an Actress (New York: [s.n], 1856), by the Irish actor and playwright Dion Boucicault (Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot – 1820-1890) [Act 3, scene 2, page 20]:
Enter Grimaldi, half dressed.
Grim Ah! mes amis, my friends, what a triomphe; de public is pack in de house like sardines in a box […]!
10-: From a correspondence from Paris, dated September 1856, published in the Melbourne Punch (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Thursday 18th December 1856 [Vol. 3, No. ?, page 153, column 1]:
There was not a bed to be had in Moscow. One wretched tourist I heard of, who, poking about for a packing-case or gas-pipe to creep into for the night, was hauled off by the police, charged with “vagrancy,” and kept in gaol till the fun was over. […] Your correspondent was more fortunate, and got a lodging with a tallow merchant in a right-of-way outside the Kremlin. We were ten in a room, packed away like sardines, and the weather was close, and the place smelt of fish oil, and I went to bed and dreamt that I was Jonah, and the whale had swallowed me.
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