Used until the end of the eighteenth-century, these iron or wooden torture devices, were usually placed near town halls, cathedrals, city walls or outside the city walls near a main crossroad.

The victim, naked or almost naked and often tortured and/or mutilated, was locked into the cage and hung up. There, they died of hunger and dehydration. In the winter, they would expire due to the hypothermia and in the summer sunburn and heatstoke would complicate their lives. The putrefying cadaver was usually left in the cage until the bones fell apart.