I was inclined—like the inhabitants of Battersea—to be incredulous of the ratcatcher’s hand-fishing, until, under a promise of secrecy, he confided his process to me, and then not only was I perfectly convinced of its truth, but startled that so simple a method had never before been taken advantage of.
Later in the day Mr. Black became very communicative. We sat chatting together in his sanded bird shop, and he told me all his misfortunes, and how bad luck had pressed upon him, and driven him out of London.
“I was fool enough to take a public-house in Regent-street, sir,” he said. “My daughter used to dress as the ‘Ratketcher’s Daughter,’ and serve behind the bar, and that did pretty well for a time; but it was a brewer’s house, and they ruined me.”
The costume of the “ratketcher’s daughter” was shown to me by her mother. It was a red velvet bodice, embroidered with silver lace.
“With a muslin skirt, and her hair down her back, she looked wery genteel,” added the parent.
Mr. Black’s chief complaint was that he could not “make an appearance,” for his “uniform”—a beautiful green coat and red waistcoat—“were pledged.”
Whilst giving me his statement, Mr. Black, in proof of his assertions of the biting powers of rats, drew my attention to the leathern breeches he wore, “as were given him twelve years ago by Captain B——.”
These were pierced in some places with the teeth of the animals, and in others were scratched and fringed like the washleather of a street knife-seller.
His hands, too, and even his face, had scars upon them from bites.
Mr. Black informed me that he had given up tobacco “since a haccident he met with from a pipe. I was smoking a pipe,” he said, “and a friend of mine by chance jobbed it into my mouth, and it went right through to the back of my palate, and I nearly died.”