subs. (old).—1.  A minor kind of prison for petty malefactors; a country ‘lock-up.’ [From CAGE, a place of confinement for birds, beasts, and, formerly, human beings.] Once in literary use; now thieves’ slang.

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  c. 1500.  Lancelot of the Lak, 2767.

        And nocht as cowart thus schamfully to ly
Excludit in to CAGE frome chewalry.  [M.]

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  1593.  SHAKESPEARE, 2 Henry VI., iv. 2. Dick. Ay, by my faith, the field is honorable, and there he was born, under a hedge; for his father had never a house but the CAGE.

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  1748.  T. DYCHE, A New General English Dictionary (5 ed.). CAGE (s.): a place of confinement for thieves or vagrants that are taken up by the watch in the night-time, to secure them till the proper officer can carry them before a magistrate.

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  1815.  SCOTT, Guy Mannering, ch. liii. I was doomed—still I kept my purpose in the CAGE and in the stocks.

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  1839.  W. H. AINSWORTH, Jack Sheppard [1882], p. 78. The CAGE at Willesden was, and is—for it is still standing—a small round building about eight feet high, with a pointed tiled roof, to which a number of boards inscribed with the names of the parish officers, and charged with a multitude of admonitory notices to vagrants and other disorderly persons, are attached.

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  1841.  Punch, vol. I, p. 3. ‘A synopsis of voting.’ He who is incited into an assault, that he may be put into the CAGE.

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  ENGLISH SYNONYMS.  For a prison generally, academy; boat; boarding-house; bower; block-house; bastille; bladhunk; stone-jug; jug; calaboose; cooler; coop; downs; clink; jigger; Irish theatre; quod; shop; stir; clinch; steel; sturrabin; mill; toll shop; floating hell; floating academy; dry room; House that Jack Built; choakee.

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  Among special names for particular prisons may be mentioned Bates’s Farm or Garden (Cold Bath Fields); Akerman’s Hotel (Newgate); Castieu’s Hotel (Melbourne Gaol); Burdon’s Hotel (White Cross Street Prison); Ellenborough Lodge, Spike or Park (the King’s Bench Prison, to which, as a matter of fact, every Chief Justice stood god-father); Campbell’s Academy (the Hulks); City College and Whittington’s College (Newgate); Tench; Pen; and Smith’s Hotel (Edinburgh).

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  FRENCH SYNONYMS.  Le castue (thieves’); la caruche (thieves’); la boîte aux cailloux (thieves’); cailloux = stones; Cf.,stone jug’; le collège (thieves’: Newgate at one time was called the City College); la cage (popular); le château (thieves’: literally a castle, château de l’ombre = a convict settlement); la chambre de sûreté (the parish prison of the Conciergerie); le chetard (thieves’); le canton (thieves’: according to Ménage in his Dictionnaire Etymologique, the original sense of this word is the same as coin. From canton has been derived the verb, cantonner, a military term signifying the billetting of troops in one or more villages); en ballon (popular: in prison); la grosse boîte (thieves’: literally the big box); la bonde (thieves’: a central prison); la Biscaye (thieves’); l’abbaye de sots bougres (thieves’: obsolete = The Silly Bugger’s Arms); le bloc (a military prison or cell, Cf., block-house); la dure (thieves’: a central prison, dur is properly hard, merciless, obdurate); la femme de l’adjudant (a military lock-up, jigger, or Irish theatre; literally the adjutant’s wife); la bagnole (popular: a diminutive of bagne, of the same meaning); la motte (thieves’: a central prison or house of correction); l’hôpital (thieves’: a man in durance is un malade = a patient); la mitre (thieves’: a corruption of mithridate, the name of a certain ointment; mitre formerly meant ‘itch’); le jetar (military; the same as chetar); l’ours (common: a term given to a prison, guard-room, or cell); la boîte à violon (a lock-up at a police-station; violon itself signifies a prison, the barred windows being compared to the strings of that instrument. Argot and Slang says:—The lingo terms jouer de la harpe, to be in prison, and jouer du violon, to file through the window bars of a cell, seem to bear out this explanation. Some philologists, however, think that the stocks being termed psaltérion, mettre au psaltérion, to put in the stocks, became synonymous with ‘to imprison,’ the expression being superseded in time by mettre au violon when that instrument itself superseded the psaltêrion); la tuneçon (old cant); l’austo (a military prison); le lycée (thieves’: = ‘academy’); l’école préparatoire (pop.: a preparatory school for young thieves) le lazaro (military: = lazar-house, or ‘spike’); le mazaro (military: = cells); la matatane (military: ‘a guard room’ or the cells); le loustaud (thieves)’; la lorcefé (thieves’: the old prison of La Force); le loir (thieves’ = ‘dormouse’); l’hosto (soldiers’ and thieves’: also popularly, ‘a house or crib’); la grotte (thieves’: the hulks. Properly a grotto or crypt); l’hôtel des haricots (familiar: from the staple of diet, Cf., Ger. Erbsien and Graupenpalais); la morte paye sur mer (obsolete: the hulks) l’ombre (popular: = ‘shade,’ Cf., Ger. Kühle); la maze (abbreviation of Mazas, a central prison in Paris); là-bas (prostitutes: St. Lazare; thieves’: the convict settlement at New Caledonia, or in Cayenne); la malle (military: Cf., English ‘box’).

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  GERMAN SYNONYMS.  Antoniklosterl (Viennese thieves’ = a prison in Vienna); Drillbajis or Drillhaus (a house of drill or correction); Echetel (Viennese thieves’); Erbsien (Viennese thieves’: from the staple of diet—Erbsen = peas. Cf., Graupenpalais); Graupenpalais (a prison in Berlin, from the staple of diet—barley); Grannigebais (Granigire Marochum = a fortress); Gymnasium (Cf., college, academy, lycée; Kaan or Kân (from the Hebrew; im Kaan scheften, to be in prison); Kue or Kuh (in die Kue sperren; to imprison); Kitt or Kittchen (from the Hebrew Kisse = a chair, throne, roof, common lodging-house, brothel, workhouse, and prison); Kille (literally an assembly); Kühle (im Kühlen sitzen, literally to sit in the ‘cooler’ or in the shade; Cf., être à l’ombre, and ‘to be under a cloud’); Leck (Viennese thieves’ M.H.G., luken, to lock up); Mifzer (Hebrew pozar, a fortress or prison); Schofelbajis (from the Hebrew schophal, bad, common, low, or unfortunate. Also a brothel); Stube (this, according to Zimmermann, signifies a prison); Tallesmasky (Hanoverian: from tallo, gallows, + masky from Maskopei, society, i.e., gallows-birds); Tfise (from the Hebrew tophas).

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  ITALIAN SYNONYMS.  Basta; casa (a house. The forms casaccia and cazanza are also used); cavagna; travagliosa (literally laborious); sentina (properly a sink of vice); viscola or visco losa.

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  SPANISH SYNONYMS.  Madrastra; angustias or ansias (literally grief or anguish); banasto (literally a large round basket); banco (properly a bench); temor (i.e., fear); trena (f).

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  PORTUGUESE SYNONYMS.  Estarim or xelro; limoeiro (a cant name for a prison in Lisbon).

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  2.  (common).—An ‘improver,’ or bustle. See BIRD-CAGE.

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  3.  (venery).—A bed; also BREEDING-CAGE.

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  1875.  W. E. HENLEY, Unpublished Ballad.

        ‘In the breeding cage I cops her,
With her stays off, all a’blowin’!—
Three parts sprung.’—

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  4.  (parliamentary).—The Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Commons; sometimes called the CHAMBER OF HORRORS, which appertains more properly to the Peeresses’ Gallery in the Upper House.

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  1870.  London Figaro, 10 June. ‘The Angels in the House.’ Mr. Crauford’s Motion for the expulsion of strangers (during the debate on The Contagious (Women’s) Diseases Act had reference to the CAGE and not to the Reporters’ Gallery.

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