"ONE HUNDRED RATS IN NINE MINUTES."
There was to be a match for fifty pounds, the proprietor of the pit having matched his dog "Skid," a wiry and ferret-eyed little terrier, to kill one hundred rats in nine minutes. Bets were now made against and for the dog, that he would or would not kill the rats in the time named, and the excitement ran high as the little venomous dog was placed in the pit carefully by his master amid considerable applause from the roughs.
"SKID'S" BATTLE WITH THE RATS.
It was simply disgusting to witness that dreadful little terrier run at each rat, shake him for a second or two in the air and then drop him quite dead on the floor of the pit, while the roughs encouraged him to his work with shouts when the rat was destroyed quickly, but occasionally when a big and ferocious rat was attacked and showed fight in return, and when the terrier seemed to hang back for a moment, a perfect storm of curses and obscene epithets were rained on the unfortunate canine. Before five minutes had elapsed the whitewashed board sides and flooring of the Rat Pit were daubed with splashes of blood, and the little terrier was foaming at the lips, and his glossy hide was flecked with dark smudgy stains. When eight minutes and forty seconds had elapsed, "Skid" snapped the neck of the last rat, and now there was nothing left in the pit but a large pool of blood on which sawdust was quickly heaped, and a bleeding mass of heaving and dying rats.
Great cheering rewarded the efforts of "Skid," who was taken up tenderly, almost lovingly by his master; and now being very sick at the stomach from the disgusting sight I left the place and took the cab, cogitating the while on what I had seen.
Disgusting as the sight of the rat butchery had proved, I afterwards learned that some two hundred men earn a living in London, and its suburbs, in catching rats alive for the use of the rat-pits. Of this number a great many, however, are paid extra by persons who wish to drive the vermin from their dwellings, and have no means of doing so but by calling in professional rat-catchers.
Some fifteen or twenty of these professional rat-catchers pursue their dangerous calling in the London sewers, preferring to catch those found in drains to the house rats, who are not as ferocious as the former. Beside, the sewer rat will fight a terrier longer and more savagely than a house rat, and as this affords good sport, the sewer rat is at a premium in the market.
THE RAT CATCHER.