“Everybody has heard of a haunted house; nearly every house in and
about London _is_ haunted. Let the doubters, if they have the courage,
go stealthily down to the kitchen at midnight, armed with a light and
whatever other weapon they like, and they will see that beings of
which Tam o’Shanter never dreamed, whose presence at daylight was only
a myth, have here ‘a local habitation and a name.’ Scared from their
nocturnal revels, the creatures run and scamper in all directions,
until, in a short time, the stage is clear, and, as in some legend of
_diablerie_, nothing remains but a most peculiar odour.
“These were no spirits, had nothing even of the fairy about them,
but were veritable cockroaches, or ‘black-beetles’--as they are more
commonly but erroneously termed--for they are not beetles at all. They
have prodigious powers of increase, and are a corresponding nuisance.
Kill as many as you will, except, perhaps, by poison, and you cannot
extirpate them--the cry is, ‘Still they come.’
“One of the best ways to be rid of them is to keep a hedgehog, to which
creature they are a favourite food, and his nocturnal habits make him
awake to theirs. I have known cats eat cockroaches, but they do not
thrive upon them.”
“One article of their food would hardly have been suspected,” says Mr.
Newman, in a note communicated to the Entomological Society, at the
meeting in February, 1855. “‘There is nothing new under the sun;’ so
says the proverb. I believed, until a few days back, that I possessed
the knowledge of a fact in the dietary economy of the cockroach of
which entomologists were not cognisant, but I find myself forestalled;
the fact is ‘as old as the hills.’ It is, that the cockroach seeks with
diligence and devours with great gusto the common bed-bug.
“I will not mention names, but I am so confident of the veracity of
the narrator, that I willingly take the entire responsibility of the
following narrative:--
“‘Poverty makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows;’ and my
informant bears willing testimony to the truth of the adage. He had not
been prosperous, and had sought shelter in a London boarding-house;
every night he saw cockroaches ascending his bed-curtains; every
morning he complained to his very respectable landlady, and invariably
received the comforting assurance that there was not a ‘black-beetle in
the house.’ Still he pursued his nocturnal investigations, and he not
only saw cockroaches running along the tester of the bed, but, to his
great astonishment, he positively observed one of them seize a bug, and
he therefore concluded, and not without some show of reason, that the
cockroach ascended the curtains with this especial object, and that the
more odoriferous insect is a favourite food of the major one.
“The following extract from Mr. Webster’s ‘Narrative of Foster’s
Voyage,’ corroborates this recent observation, and illustrates the
proverb which I have taken as my text: ‘Cockroaches, those nuisances
of ships, are plentiful at St. Helena, and yet, bad as they are, they
are more endurable than bugs. Previous to our arrival here in the
Chanticleer we had suffered great inconvenience from the latter; but
the cockroaches no sooner made their appearance than the bugs entirely
disappeared. The fact is, the cockroach preys upon them, and leaves no
sign or vestige of where they have been. So far, the latter is a most
valuable insect.’”
So great is the annoyance and discomfort arising from these insects
in Cockney households, that the author of a paper in the _Daily News_
discusses the best means of effecting their extirpation. The writer
of the article referred to avows his conviction, that the ingenious
individual who shall devise the means of effectually ridding our
houses of these insect pests will deserve to be ranked amongst the
benefactors of mankind. The writer details the various expedients
resorted to--hedgehogs, cucumber-peel, red wafers, phosphoric paste,
glazed basins or pie-dishes filled with beer, or a syrup of beer and
sugar, with bits of wood set up from the floor to the edge, for the
creatures to run up by, and then be precipitated into the fatal lake,
but believes that “none of these methods are fundamental enough for the
evil,” which, so far as he is yet aware, can only be effectually cured
by heating our houses by steam!