“Another time I met with two racoons, which I found could handle me just as well as I could handle a rat, for they did bite and scratch awful. I put ’em in the cart, and brought them home in a basket. I never found out to whom they belonged. I got them in Ratcliffe-highway, and no doubt some sailors had brought them over, and got drunk, and let ’em loose. I tried them at killing rats, but they weren’t no good at that.
“I’ve learnt a monkey to kill rats, but he wouldn’t do much, and only give them a good shaking when they bit him. After I found the racoons no good, I trained a badger to kill rats, and he was superior to any dog, but very difficult in training to get him to kill, though they’ll kill rabbits fast enough, or any other kind of game, for they’re rare poachers are badgers. I used to call her Polly. She killed in my own pit, for I used to obleege my friends that wouldn’t believe it possible with the sight. She won several matches—the largest was in a hundred match.
“I also sterminate moles for her Majesty, and the Woods and Forests, and I’ve sterminated some hundreds for different farmers in the country. It’s a cur’ous thing, but a mole will kill a rat and eat it afterwards, and two moles will fight wonderful. They’ve got a mouth exactly like a shark, and teeth like saws; ah, a wonderful saw mouth. They’re a very sharp-biting little animal, and very painful. A rat is frightened of one, and don’t like fighting them at all.
“I’ve bred the finest collection of pied rats which has ever been knowed in the world. I had above eleven hundred of them—all wariegated rats, and of a different specie and colour, and all of them in the first instance bred from the Norwegian and the white rat, and afterwards crossed with other specie.
“I have ris some of the largest tailed rats ever seen. I’ve sent them to all parts of the globe, and near every town in England. When I sold ’em off, three hundred of them went to France. I ketched the first white rat I had at Hampstead; and the black ones at Messrs. Hodges and Lowman’s, in Regent-street, and them I bred in. I have ’em fawn and white, black and white, brown and white, red and white, blue-black and white, black-white and red.
“People come from all parts of London to see them rats, and I supplied near all the ‘happy families’ with them. Burke, who had the ‘happy family’ showing about London, has had hundreds from me. They got very tame, and you could do anythink with them. I’ve sold many to ladies for keeping in squirrel cages. Years ago I sold ’em for five and ten shillings a-piece, but towards the end of my breeding them, I let ’em go for two-and-six. At a shop in Leicester-square, where Cantello’s hatching-eggs machine was, I sold a sow and six young ones for ten shillings, which formerly I have had five pounds for, being so docile, like a sow sucking her pigs.”
The Sewerman.
He is a broad-shouldered, strongly-built man, with a stoop in his shoulders, and a rather dull cast of features; from living so much in the “shores” (sewers), his eyes have assumed a peering kind of look, that is quite rat-like in its furtiveness.
He answered our questions with great good humour, but in short monosyllabic terms, peculiar to men who have little communion with their fellows.
The “parlour” in which the man lives was literally swarming with children when we paid him a visit (they were not all “belonging” to him). Nor was it quite pleasant to find that the smell of the tea, which had just been made, was overpowered by the odour of the rats which he keeps in the same room.