Cage, linnet cage

This small wooden cage is typical of the kind used in the nineteenth century to keep linnets and other popular songbirds. Light, hand-made and fitted with a tiny water jug and perch, it was designed to be hung from a hook so the bird was safely out of the way in even an overcrowded home or workplace. Linnets were especially prized: long-lived, easily tamed from a chick, and admired for their clear, melodic song.

By the 1860s, Londoners were buying songbirds in vast numbers, with Henry Mayhew estimating around 300,000 sold each year. In working class households, a caged bird was an affordable companion and a sign of order and respectability. At the same time, campaigners were beginning to criticise the wild-bird trade for the suffering caused by netting and trapping. But bird-keeping remained especially popular in East London well into the twentieth century, with the bird market on Club Row finally closing in 1983.