At the beginning of chapter 37 of Oliver Twist, Mr Bumble the ex-Beadle contemplates his two months of married life:
A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which he occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought; and, as the heedless insects hovered round the gaudy net-work, Mr. Bumble would heave a deep sigh, while a more gloomy shadow overspread his countenance.
I can't quite make out the nature of a paper fly-cage. Sticky like flypaper?
Assuming that you had already searched for fly cages, I wondered whether I should even bother. I decided to try.
"Fly cage" resulted in images of large cages designed to allow pet birds to fly rather than to just hop on and off a perch as in a typical canary cage.
"Fly trap" resulted in images of insect-eating plants.
"Paper fly trap" also resulted in images of plants, including one illustration of how to make an origami Venus fly trap, but there were also two images of insect traps. The first of them showed something rather intricate, and the other showed a present-day commercial product.
My hunch is that it would be a paper version of one of these, which I got to by searching "Victorian fly trap."
Point lace paper fly cages It's Google books so I don't know how well the link will work. It's from the 1869 +Cassell's Household Guide.</i>
For this particular fly cage, you cut out some tissue paper things that are sort of like snowflake cut outs. You glue them together around a wire that will be used for hanging. Being a true Victorian, you add a couple of tassels.
A modern source, on Victorian crafts, which I had to extract from Snippet view, uses Cassell's directions and prefaces:
>The best plan of action is to build a roaring fire on the hearth, set your son to roasting chestnuts, your daughter to stitching her sampler, and then, while your spouse reads aloud from David Copperfield, you snip away on a fly cage.
These were apparently used not just for catching flies, but for holding insects in general, say, a butterfly. There is a rther awful early 19th C. memoir:
>The happy silence which had prevailed a few moments, was now interrupted by the children, who ran in with rosy and cheerful faces, the elder having a small paper fly cage in his hand.
>"What have you there, my dear?" said Mrs. Graham.
>A butterfly gran'mother--such a beauty--only see I have had such a run for it.
Gran'mother goes on to piously urge the kids to let it go.
>You would not injure it like some cruel boys, but do you think it can be happy, shut up in this thing when God has made it to fly about in the sun and air?
Naturally the kids let it go and run to give gran'mother an "atoning kiss."
By the way, I used the simple search strategy of paper "fly cage". If the link above doesn't work, append "cassell" to the terms.
Nice track down, Nutrax!
How such a contraption could hold a butterfly baffles, though...as do the assembly instructions.
Maybe they were meant to be more decorative than functional.
What would induce the heedless insects to hover around them anyway, considering what flies are normally drawn to? No bait is mentioned in the Household Guide. It all sounds very Martha Stewarty.
Many years ago in Australia, we had fly-traps. Long strips of sticky paper hung from the ceiling to which the flies were attracted. Not exactly a cage, but it was most effective in catching the pests. The Australian bush has always been notorious for the amount of flies that exist there.