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 2d. 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 3d. 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 2d. in the country, though they get their 3d. 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 3d. 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 3d. 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!