The proprietor of one of the largest sporting public-houses in London,
who is celebrated for the rat-matches which come off weekly at his
establishment, was kind enough to favour me with a few details as
to the quality of those animals which are destroyed in his pit. His
statement was certainly one of the most curious that I have listened
to, and it was given to me with a readiness and a courtesy of manner
such as I have not often met with during my researches. The landlord
himself is known in pugilistic circles as one of the most skilful
boxers among what is termed the “light weights.”
His statement is curious, as a proof of the large trade which is
carried on in these animals, for it would seem that the men who make a
business of catching rats are not always employed as “exterminators,”
for they make a good living as “purveyors” for supplying the demands of
the sporting portion of London.
“The poor people,” said the sporting landlord, “who supply me with
rats, are what you may call barn-door labouring poor, for they are the
most ignorant people I ever come near. Really you would not believe
people could live in such ignorance. Talk about Latin and Greek,
sir, why English is Latin to them--in fact, I have a difficulty to
understand them myself. When the harvest is got in, they go hunting
the hedges and ditches for rats. Once the farmers had to pay 2_d._
a-head for all rats caught on their grounds, and they nailed them up
against the wall. But now that the rat-ketchers can get 3_d._ each by
bringing the vermin up to town, the farmers don’t pay them anything
for what they ketch, but merely give them permission to hunt them in
their stacks and barns, so that they no longer get their 2_d._ in the
country, though they get their 3_d._ in town.
“I have some twenty families depending upon me. From Clavering, in
Essex, I suppose I have hundreds of thousands of rats sent to me in
wire cages fitted into baskets. From Enfield I have a great quantity,
but the ketchers don’t get them all there, but travel round the country
for scores of miles, for you see 3_d._ a-head is money; besides, there
are some liberal farmers who will still give them a halfpenny a-head
into the bargain. Enfield is a kind of head-quarters for rat-ketchers.
“It’s dangerous work, though, for you see there is a wonderful deal of
difference in the specie of rats. The bite of sewer or water-ditch rats
is very bad. The water and ditch rat lives on filth, but your barn-rat
is a plump fellow, and he lives on the best of everything. He’s well
off. There’s as much difference between the barn and sewer-rats as
between a brewer’s horse and a costermonger’s. Sewer-rats are very bad
for dogs, their coats is poisonous.
“Some of the rats that are brought to me are caught in the warehouses
in the City. Wherever there is anything in the shape of provisions,
there you are sure to find Mr. Rat an intruder. The ketchers are paid
for ketching them in the warehouses, and then they are sold to me
as well, so the men must make a good thing of it. Many of the more
courageous kind of warehousemen will take a pleasure in hunting the
rats themselves.
“I should think I buy in the course of the year, on the average, from
300 to 700 rats a-week.” (Taking 500 as the weekly average, this gives
a yearly purchase of 26,000 live rats.) “That’s what I kill taking all
the year round, you see. Some first-class chaps will come here in the
day-time, and they’ll try their dogs. They’ll say, ‘Jimmy, give the dog
100.’ After he’s polished them off they’ll say, perhaps, ‘Hang it, give
him another 100.’ Bless you!” he added, in a kind of whisper, “I’ve
had noble ladies and titled ladies come here to see the sport--on the
quiet, you know. When my wife was here they would come regular, but now
she’s away they don’t come so often.
“The largest quantity of rats I’ve bought from one man was five
guineas’ worth, or thirty-five dozen at 3_d._ a-head, and that’s a
load for a horse. This man comes up from Clavering in a kind of cart,
with a horse that’s a regular phenomena, for it ain’t like a beast nor
nothing. I pays him a good deal of money at times, and I’m sure I can’t
tell what he does with it; but they _do_ tell me that he deals in old
iron, and goes buying it up, though he don’t seem to have much of a
head-piece for that sort of fancy neither.
“During the harvest-time the rats run scarcer you see, and the ketcher
turns up rat-ketching for harvest work. After the harvest rats gets
plentiful again.
“I’ve had as many as 2000 rats in this very house at one time. They’ll
consume a sack of barley-meal a week, and the brutes, if you don’t give
’em good stuff, they’ll eat one another, hang ’em!
“I’m the oldest canine fancier in London, and I’m the first that
started ratting; in fact, I know I’m the oldest caterer in rat-killing
in the metropolis. I began as a lad, and I had many noble friends,
and was as good a man then as I am now. In fact, when I was seventeen
or eighteen years of age I was just like what my boy is now. I used
at that time to be a great public charakter, and had many liberal
friends--very liberal friends. I used to give them rat sports, and I
have kept to it ever since. My boy can handle rats now just as I used
to then.
“Have I been bit by them? Aye, hundreds of times. Now, some people will
say, ‘Rub yourself over with caraway and stuff, and then rats won’t
bite you.’ But I give you my word and honour it’s all nonsense, sir.
“As I said, I was the first in London to give rat sports, and I’ve kept
to it ever since. Bless you, there’s nothing that a rat won’t bite
through. I’ve seen my lads standing in the pit with the rats running
about them, and if they haven’t taken the precaution to tie their
trousers round with a bit of string at the bottom, they’d have as many
as five or six rats run up their trouser-legs. They’ll deliberately
take off their clothes and pick them out from their shirts, and bosoms,
and breeches. Some people is amused, and others is horror-struck.
People have asked them whether they ain’t rubbed? They’ll say ‘Yes,’
but that’s as a lark; ’cos, sometimes when my boy has been taking
the rats out of the cage, and somebody has taken his attention off,
talking to him, he has had a bite, and will turn to me with his finger
bleeding, and say, ‘Yes, I’m rubbed, ain’t I, father? look here!’
“A rat’s bite is very singular, it’s a three-cornered one, like a
leech’s, only deeper, of course, and it will bleed for ever such a
time. My boys have sometimes had their fingers go dreadfully bad from
rat-bites, so that they turn all black and putrid like--aye, as black
as the horse-hair covering to my sofa. People have said to me, ‘You
ought to send the lad to the hospital, and have his finger took off;’
but I’ve always left it to the lads, and they’ve said, ‘Oh, don’t mind
it, father; it’ll get all right by and by.’ And so it has.
“The best thing I ever found for a rat-bite was the thick bottoms
of porter-casks put on as a poultice. The only thing you can do is
to poultice, and these porter bottoms is so powerful and draws so,
that they’ll actually take thorns out of horses’ hoofs and feet after
steeplechasing.
“In handling rats, it’s nothing more in the world but nerve that does
it. I should faint now if a rat was to run up my breeches, but I have
known the time when I’ve been kivered with ’em.
“I generally throw my dead rats away now; but two or three years since
my boys took the idea of skinning them into their heads, and they did
about 300 of them, and their skins was very promising. The boys was,
after all, obliged to give them away to a furrier, for my wife didn’t
like the notion, and I said, ‘Throw them away;’ but the idea strikes me
to be something, and one that is lost sight of, for the skins are warm
and handsome-looking--a beautiful grey.
“There’s nothing turns so quickly as dead rats, so I am obleeged to
have my dustmen come round every Wednesday morning; and regularly
enough they call too, for they know where there is a bob and a pot. I
generally prefers using the authorised dustmen, though the others come
sometimes--the flying dustmen they call ’em--and if they’re first, they
has the job.
“It strikes me, though, that to throw away so many valuable skins is a
good thing lost sight of.
“The rats want a deal of watching, and a deal of sorting. Now you can’t
put a sewer and a barn-rat together, it’s like putting a Roosshian and
a Turk under the same roof.
“I can tell a barn-rat from a ship-rat or a sewer-rat in a minute, and
I have to look over my stock when they come in, or they’d fight to the
death. There’s six or seven different kinds of rats, and if we don’t
sort ’em they tear one another to pieces. I think when I have a number
of rats in the house, that I am a lucky man if I don’t find a dozen
dead when I go up to them in the morning; and when I tell you that at
times--when I’ve wanted to make up my number for a match--I’ve given
21_s._ for twenty rats, you may think I lose something that way every
year. Rats, even now, is occasionally 6_s._ a-dozen; but that, I think,
is most inconsistent.
“If I had my will, I wouldn’t allow sewer ratting, for the rats in the
shores eats up a great quantity of sewer filth and rubbish, and is
another specie of scavenger in their own way.”
After finishing his statement, the landlord showed me some very curious
specimens of tame rats--some piebald, and others quite white, with pink
eyes, which he kept in cages in his sitting-room. He took them out from
their cages, and handled them without the least fear, and even handled
them rather rudely, as he showed me the peculiarities of their colours;
yet the little tame creatures did not once attempt to bite him. Indeed,
they appeared to have lost the notion of regaining their liberty, and
when near their cages struggled to return to their nests.
In one of these boxes a black and a white rat were confined together,
and the proprietor, pointing to them, remarked, “I hope they’ll
breed, for though white rats is very scarce, only occurring in fact by
a freak of nature, I fancy I shall be able, with time and trouble, to
breed ’em myself. The old English rat is a small jet-black rat; but the
first white rat as I heard of come out of a burial-ground. At one time
I bred rats very largely, but now I leaves that fancy to my boys, for
I’ve as much as I can do continuing to serve my worthy patrons.”