I will now state what I have learned from long-experienced men, as
to the characteristics of the rats in the sewers. To arrive even at
a conjecture as to the numbers of these creatures--now, as it were,
the population of the sewers--I found impossible, for no statistical
observations have been made on the subject; but all my informants
agreed that the number of the animals had been greatly diminished
within these four or five years.
In the better-constructed sewers there are no rats. In the old sewers
they abound. The sewer rat is the ordinary house or brown rat,
excepting at the outlets near the river, and here the water-rat is seen.
The sewer-rat is the common brown or Hanoverian rat, said by the
Jacobites to have come in with the first George, and established
itself after the fashion of his royal family; and undoubtedly such
was about the era of their appearance. One man, who had worked twelve
years in the sewers before flushing was general, told me he had never
seen but _two_ black (or old English) rats; another man, of ten years’
experience, had seen but one; others had noted no difference in the
rats. I may observe that in my inquiries as to the sale of rats (as
a part of the live animals dealt in by a class in the metropolis), I
ascertained that in the older granaries, where there were series of
floors, there were black as well as brown rats. “Great black fellows,”
said one man who managed a Bermondsey granary, “as would frighten a
lady into asterisks to see of a sudden.”
The rat is the only animal found in the sewers. I met with no
flusherman or other sewer-worker who had ever seen a lizard, toad,
or frog there, although the existence of these creatures, in such
circumstances, has been presumed. A few live cats find their way
into the subterranean channels when a house-drain is being built,
or is opened for repairs, or for any purpose, and have been seen by
the flushermen, &c., wandering about, looking lost, mewing as if in
misery, and avoiding any contact with the sewage. The rats also--for
they are not of the water-rat breed--are exceedingly averse to wetting
their feet, and “take to the sewage,” as it was worded to me, only
in prospect of danger; that is, they then swim across or along the
current to escape with their lives. It is said that when a luckless
cat has ventured into the sewers, she is sometimes literally worried
by the rats. I could not hear of such an attack having been witnessed
by any one; but one intelligent and trustworthy man said, that a few
years back (he believed about eight years) he had in one week found the
skeletons of two cats in a particular part of an old sewer, 21 feet
wide, and in the drains opening into it were perfect colonies of rats,
raging with hunger, he had no doubt, because a system of trapping,
newly resorted to, had prevented their usual ingress into the houses
up the drains. A portion of their fur adhered to the two cats, but the
flesh had been eaten from their bones. About that time a troop of rats
flew at the feet of another of my informants, and would no doubt have
maimed him seriously, “but my boots,” said he, “stopped the devils.”
“The sewers generally swarms with rats,” said another man. “I runs away
from ’em; I don’t like ’em. They in general gets away from us; but in
case we comes to a stunt end where there’s a wall and no place for ’em
to get away, and we goes to touch ’em, they fly at us. They’re some of
’em as big as good-sized kittens. One of our men caught hold of one the
other day by the tail, and he found it trying to release itself, and
the tail slipping through his fingers; so he put up his left hand to
stop it, and the rat caught hold of his finger, and the man’s got an
arm now as big as his thigh.” I heard from several that there had been
occasionally battles among the rats, one with another.
“Why, sir,” said one flusherman, “as to the number of rats, it ain’t
possible to say. There hasn’t been a census (laughing) taken of
them. But I can tell you this--I was one of the first flushermen
when flushing came in general--I think it was before Christmas,
1847, under Mr. Roe--and there was cart-loads and cart-loads of
drowned rats carried into the Thames. It was in a West Strand _shore_
that I saw the most. I don’t exactly remember which, but I think
Northumberland-street. By a block or a hitch of some sort, there was,
I should say, just a bushel of drowned rats stopped at the corner of
one of the gates, which I swept into the next stream. I see far fewer
drowned rats now than before the _shores_ was flushed. They’re not so
plenty, that’s one thing. Perhaps, too, they may have got to understand
about flushing, they’re that ’cute, and manage to keep out of the way.
About Newgate-market was at one time the worst for rats. Men couldn’t
venture into the sewers then, on account of the varmint. It’s bad
enough still, I hear, but I haven’t worked in the City for a few years.”
The rats, from the best information at my command, do not derive
much of their sustenance from the matter in the sewers, or only in
particular localities. These localities are the sewers neighbouring
a connected series of slaughter-houses, as in Newgate-market,
Whitechapel, Clare-market, parts adjoining Smithfield-market, &c.
There, animal offal being (and having been to a much greater extent
five or six years ago) swept into the drains and sewers, the rats
find their food. In the sewers, generally, there is little food for
them, and none at all in the best-constructed sewers, where there is a
regular and sometimes rapid flow, and little or no deposit.
The sewers are these animals’ breeding grounds. In them the broods
are usually safe from the molestation of men, dogs, or cats. These
“breeding grounds” are sometimes in the holes (excavated by the
industry of the rats into caves) which have been formed in the old
sewers by a crumbled brick having fallen out. Their nests, however,
are in some parts even more frequent in places where old rotting large
house-drains or smaller sewers, empty themselves into a first-class
sewer. Here, then, the rats breed, and, in spite of precautions, find
their way up the drains or pipes, even through the openings into
water-closets, into the houses for their food, and almost always at
night. Of this fact, builders, and those best informed, are confident,
and it is proved indirectly by what I have stated as to the deficiency
of food for a voracious creature in all the sewers except a few.
One man, long in the service of the Commissioners of Sewers, and in
different capacities, gave me the following account of what may be
called a rat settlement. The statement I found confirmed by other
working men, and by superior officers under the same employment.
“Why, sir, in the Milford-lane sewer, a goodish bit before you get to
the river, or to the Strand--I can’t say how far, a few hundred yards
perhaps--I’ve seen, and reported, what was a regular chamber of rats.
If a brick didn’t fall out from being rotted, the rats would get it
out, and send it among other rubbish into the sewer, for this place was
just the corner of a big drain. I couldn’t get into the rat-hole, of
course not, but I’ve brought my lamp to the opening, and--as well as
others--have seen it plain. It was an open place like a lot of tunnels,
one over another. Like a lot of rabbit burrows in the country--as I’ve
known to be--or like the partitions in the pigeon-houses: one here and
another there. The rat-holes, as far as I could tell, were worked one
after another. I should say, in moderation, that it was the size of a
small room; well, say about 6 yards by 4. I can’t say about the height
from the lowest tunnel to the highest. I don’t see that any one could.
Bless you, sir, I’ve sometimes heerd the rats fighting and squeaking
there, like a parcel of drunken Irishmen--I have indeed. Some of them
were rare big fellows. If you threw the light of your lamp on them
sudden, they’d be off like a shot. Well, I should say, there was 100
pair of rats there--there might be more, besides all their young-uns.
If a poor cat strayed into that sewer, she dursn’t tackle the rats, not
she. There’s lots of such places, sir, here, and there, and everywhere.”
“I believe rats,” says a late enthusiastic writer on the subject, under
the cognomen of Uncle James, “to be one of the most fertile causes
of national and universal distress, and their attendants, misery and
starvation.”
From the author’s inquiries among practical men, and from his own study
of the natural history of the rat, he shows that these animals will
have six, seven, or eight nests of young in the year, for three or four
years together; that they have from twelve to twenty-three at a litter,
and breed at three months old; and that there are more female than male
rats, by ten to six.
The author seems somewhat of an enthusiast about rats, and as
the sewerage is often the head-quarters of these animals--their
“breeding-ground” indeed--I extract the following curious matter. He
says:--
“Now, I propose to lay down my calculations at something less than
one-half. In the first place, I say four litters in the year, beginning
and ending with a litter, so making thirteen litters in three years;
secondly to have eight young ones at a birth, half male and half
female; thirdly, the young ones to have a litter at six months old.
“At this calculation, I will take one pair of rats; and at the
expiration of three years what do you suppose will be the amount of
living rats? Why no less a number than 646,808.
“Mr. Shaw’s little dog ‘Tiny,’ under six pounds weight, has destroyed
2525 pairs of rats, which, had they been permitted to live, would, at
the same calculation and in the same time, have produced 1,633,190,200
living rats!
“And the rats destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin in one year,
amounting to 17,000 pairs, would, had they been permitted to live, have
produced, at the above calculation and in the same time, no less a
number than 10,995,736,000 living rats!
“Now, let us calculate the amount of human food that these rats would
destroy. In the first place, my informants tell me that six rats will
consume day by day as much food as a man; secondly, that the thing has
been tested, and that the estimate given was, that eight rats would
consume more than an ordinary man.
“Now, I--to place the thing beyond the smallest shadow of a doubt--will
set down ten rats to eat as much as a man, not a child; nor will I
say anything about what rats waste. And what shall we find to be the
alarming result? Why, that the first pair of rats, with their three
years’ progeny, would consume in the night more food than 64,680 men
the year round, and leaving eight rats to spare!”