“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.