Ratting for the Million!

A SPORTING GENTLEMAN, Who is a Staunch Supporter of the destruction of these VERMIN WILL GIVE A GOLD REPEATER WATCH, TO BE KILLED FOR BY _DOGS Under 13-3/4lbs. Wt. 15 RATS EACH!_ TO COME OFF AT JEMMY MASSEY’S, KING’S HEAD, COMPTON ST., SOHO, On Tuesday, May 20, 1851.

☞ To be Killed in a Large Wire Pit. A chalk Circle to be drawn in the centre for the Second.--Any Man touching Dog or Rats, or acting in any way unfair his dog will be disqualified.

TO GO TO SCALE AT Half past 7 KILLING TO COMMENCE At Half past 8 PRECISELY.

A dealer in live animals told me that there were several men who brought a few dozens of rats, or even a single dozen, from the country; men who were not professionally rat-catchers, but worked in gardens, or on farms, and at their leisure caught rats. Even some of the London professional rat-catchers work sometimes as country labourers, and their business is far greater, in merely rat-catching or killing, in the country than in town. From the best information I could command, there are not fewer than 2000 rats killed, for sport, in London weekly, or 104,000 a year, including private and public sport, for private sport in this pursuit goes on uninterruptedly; the public delectation therein is but periodical.

This calculation is of course exclusive of the number of rats killed by the profession, “on the premises,” when these men are employed to “clear the premises of vermin.”

There are, I am told, 100 rat-catchers resorting, at intervals, to London, but only a fourth of that number can be estimated as carrying on their labours regularly in town, and their average earnings, I am assured, do not exceed 15s. a week; being 975l. a year for London merely.

These men have about them much of the affected mystery of men who are engaged on the turf. They have their “secrets,” make or pretend to “make their books” on rat fights and other sporting events; are not averse to drinking, and lead in general irregular lives. They are usually on intimate terms with the street dog-sellers (who are much of the same class). Many of the rat-catchers have been brought up in stables, and there is little education among them. When in London, they are chiefly to be found in Whitechapel, Westminster, and Kent-street, Borough; the more established having their own rooms; the others living in the low lodging-houses. None of them remain in London the entire year.

These men also sell rat-poison (baked flour or oatmeal sometimes) in cakes, arsenic being the ingredient. The charge is from 2d. to 1s., “according to the circumstances of the customer.” In like manner the charge for “clearing a house of vermin” varies from 2s. to 1l.: a very frequent charge is 2s. 6d.