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A temporary cage for holding (originally) black slaves, and later convicts and other types of prisoners.
1863, Richard F. Burton, Wanderings in West Africa, Dover Publications 1991 edition, volume II, page 36:
Beyond Cape Palmas, the coast line is a beach of bright white sand, from which the slave barracoons have now disappeared […].
1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 53:
He was now a prisoner, and—thrust into a suffocating barracoon, herded with the foulest of mankind, with all imaginable depths of blasphemy and indecency sounded hourly in his sight and hearing—he lost his self-respect, and became what the jailers took him to be […].
