Whiskers and Wire Cages- The Work of a Rat-Catcher

In Victorian England, hordes of rats invade every building to eat, proliferate, and destroy. As architecture and engineering advanced, rats found new ways to invade and new delicacies to eat and destroy. Skilled rat-catchers devised their own tricks to outwit nature’s perfect scavenger.

Some businesses prone to rat invasion (such as tobacco shops, woodworkers, or granaries) contract a rat-catcher by the month or year to handle infestations as necessary. The cost per year to retain a rat-catcher’s services ranges from 1 guinea (one pound and one shilling) to 5 pounds per year depending on the size of the building. For short-term jobs, rat-catchers charge by the night, 2-8 shillings.  All rat-catchers are self-employed, and these high-sounding prices cover the costs of traps, trap repairs, dogs, dog licenses, nets, net repairs, cages, and ferrets. While a simple bag is fine for collecting rats while checking traps, rats should be transferred into strong wire cages for transport and to avoid escape or harm.

Enterprising rat-catchers know a live healthy rat is worth more than a dead rat. Rats can be bred for distinct colorations as pets and curiosities, but most of the rats caught by rat-catchers are bought by purveyors of sport, such as Rat-Baiting or Rat-Coursing, for 3 pence a rat. At harvest time, rat-catchers leave the city behind to catch rats scavenging threshed corn and grain. Even a mediocre rat-catcher could collect 50 or more healthy rats a day with little trouble just by laying traps around fields and barns.

 Although lucrative, rat-catching is not pleasant work. Much of the rat-catchers work happens at night when rats are most active. A strange man prowling around a closed business at night with a directional lantern looks very suspicious, so most rat-catchers inform local constabularies before undertaking a night’s work. Rat-catchers spend long nights in cold, damp, and often unsanitary places, plunging arms into walls to pull out struggling rats, closing broken sewer drains, watching traps, and disturbing rat nests in high rafters. Most dreadful of all, are the inevitable rat bites which rat-catchers must accept as an inevitable hazard of their profession. In fact, you can recognize a rat-catcher by the multitude of scars covering his hands and face. Rats have strong jaws and long teeth which often bite down to the bone. Heavy leather breeches protect rat-catchers legs and ropes tied around their ankles prevent rats climbing up their pant legs, but most rat-catchers avoid wearing thick gloves so they can feel their work in the dark. Infected rat bites lead to swelling, throbbing, and putrefaction. Rat-catchers pragmatically treat their wounds by lancing open the infected area, cleaning it of pus, and applying a homemade ointment. Horrible fevers bringing rat-catchers to death’s door for a few weeks is all part of the job.

Adventure Ideas

All rat-catchers agree the worst job in London is the Guildhouse. As the home of the Worshipful Company of Hermeticists, the Guildhouse is full of thaumaturgical equipment, dangerous enchantments, and grumpy careless magicians. The building’s halls and rooms don’t follow the laws of nature very well, and nobody thinks to warn rat-catchers about the magical spells protecting certain corridors from prying eyes. Worst of all, the rats don’t behave the way rats should. Sometimes they breathe fire, sometimes they fly, and sometimes they talk.

Now that we have the basics covered, we can move onto the clever, cruel, and creative methods rat-catchers used to catch rats.

Whiskers and Wire Cages: The Rats of England

In the Victorian world divided by class, race, and nationality, the horror of rats unites all. Their fanged, disease-carrying bodies cause less fear than the damage and ruination brought by their ravenous appetites. Armed with experience, courage, the proper tools of the job, and strong stomachs, Victorian rat-Catchers labored to protect their clients, homes, business and property from infestations. We’re examining the work of rat-catchers and how they could be brought to the gaming table, but first we must first familiarize ourselves with their prey.

Broadly, there are two species of rats in the British Isles: black rats and brown rats. Black rats arrived in England with the Romans and are now found all through the countryside, scavenging in barns, fields, and along river banks. Brown rats, or wharf rats are a foreign species introduced to the British Isles sometime in the early 1700s. Brown rats are larger than black rats and will eat practically anything, two traits which help them thrive in cities, pushing the smaller species out to the country.

Professional rat-catchers further divide rats by habitat, health, and disposition:

-Barn Rats or Burrow Rats are always black rats caught in the countryside, and are cleaner and healthier than rats caught in the city. Their bites tend to heal cleanly with little danger of disease because of their diet of corn and feed. 

-Sewer Rats and Drain Rats are universally brown rats. Their horrific diet of scavenging in the sewer gives their bites a high chance of infection and blood poisoning. Even their fur carries disease, leading some rat-catchers to believe they are poisonous.

-Red Rats feed daily on flesh, such as discarded fat outside a tannery or scraps stolen from the dead horses fed to dogs kept in kennels. Their diet gives them a boldness and ferocity greater than other rats. If a variety of rats inhabit a cage for a night, only the red rats will remain alive in the morning,

- Some rat-catchers tell stories about “Blood Rats”, large vicious rats with hairless heads and long fangs, giving them a “snake-like head”.  These strange creatures supposedly steal into children’s rooms at night and gnaw at their extremities.

As sewers grow more efficient, fetid food sources flow out before they can be eaten, bringing sewer rats up to the surface. They crawl up drains and chew through lead pipes to scavenge in homes and warehouses. Rats nibble fine fabric and soft woods to wear down their teeth, ruining fine furniture, clothes, and furnishings. In farms, feeds stores, warehouses, grocers, and kitchens rats eat harvested goods, steal extra to take back to their nest, and spoil a great quantity more. Rats even kill poultry and steal eggs by rolling them to their nest, making the vermin a true bane to any chicken farm.

They thrive in the city, thanks to their terrific cunning and adaptability. Wherever one rat is spotted, dozens more lie in hiding. Rats breed quickly with litters of up to 20 pups and can become pregnant immediately after birth.  Some naturalists decry their extermination, believing a healthy population of rats in the sewers helps mankind by reducing the amount of decaying waste from which waft “sickening vapors” carrying plagues up from the drains, but when small piles of scat sprout up in the pantry, everyone calls the rat-catcher.

Adventure Idea

Each morning a certain anatomist finds that the books, tools, and chemicals in his dissection room have been moved during the night. He has taken more precautions to secure the room each day, such as locking the door, baring the windows and requesting constables to check his home’s exterior during their rounds. The only openings left are a few pipes the rats chewed open, but they couldn’t be possibly the culprits.

According to legend, basilisks and cockatrices are born when a toad or snake sits on a yokeless egg. What happens when a rat accidentally sits on a stolen chicken egg just before it hatches? A Ratalisk? A Cockatrat?

Next week we get down to business, by looking at the work of the Rat-Catcher.

Nourish and Extinguish- Salamanders in Victoriana

Victoriana is as much fantasy as it is rooted in 1850s history, so as I wrote about chimney sweeps my mind wandered into more fantastic waters. Fire elementals and medieval bestiaries kept popping up, but I didn’t have room for them in my previous posts. So now, here are some ideas and rules for Salamanders in Victoriana.

While many cold-blooded creatures thrive in heat, the salamander is truly Pyrophillious.  Unlike the amphibian of the same name, salamanders rest in blazing flames without burning or bother. Fire warms their blood, cleans their skin, and serves as a sanctuary for eggs about to hatch. Should a fire grow too hot for the salamander’s tastes, glands in its skin sweat a milky flame-quenching liquid, a teaspoon of which dripped into a fireplace quickly extinguishes all flames leaving only lukewarm ash and smoke. Salamanders wander into camps and homes in search of unattended hearths or open flames. Modern industry attracted salamanders out of marshes and forests into the cities of Europe and Asia in search of a nice warm fire.

A fully grown salamander spans 2-4 feet from their blunt nose to their thick tail and weighs between 30 to 70 pounds. Their four legs terminate with curiously human-like hands. Moist pitch-black skin mottled with bright yellow stripes or spots covers their long chubby bodies. Strangely, the temperature of the fire surrounding their egg when they hatch drastically affects their coloration and demeanor. If their fire grows too warm, orange or even red hues creep into the yellow patches and their ferocity grows to the point of attacking with little provocation. If the fire dies before they hatch, their pigmentation dulls to a dark brown and they have a more docile temperament.

A deadly poison covers a salamander’s skin, causing irritation, hair loss, and convulsions upon contact.  Prolonged exposure or ingestion brings death in minutes. Some medieval legends describe predatory salamanders killing a full grown man by leaping on his head, and rubbing their belly on his face. Paradoxically, the salamander’s excretions and skin save countless lives every year. Tanned salamander hide loses little of its inherent flame-retardant qualities. Salamander skin gloves protect engineers and craftsman attached to prestigious firms and the most successful chimney sweeps wear full suits of salamander skin when battling chimney fires, although many only claim to own a salamander suit in order to raise their credibility.  Salamander farms collect their excretions for fighting fires and a host of industrial applications.

Salamanders are not native to the British Isles. The nearest native population of Salamanders slither in the French countryside across the channel, despite the efforts of local hunters to rid their home of such a dangerous creature.

Salamander

Initiative: 8

Physical: 8

Mental: 3

Health Pips: 4

Special Traits:

Pyrophillious- Salamander’s bodies are adapted to heat and possess Armor Value 8 against any fire damage. A salamander may spend an action to extinguish flames touching its body.

Regeneration x3- (See page 294 in Victoriana 3rd Edition Rulebook) In addition to quickly regaining hit points, Salamanders can regrow lost legs or a lost tail a few days after their loss. A Salamander’s body loses its regenerative abilities at death.

Poisonous Skin- Any character touching a salamander with their bare skin must pass a Fortitude test against the poison’s potency of 8. Whether they pass or fail, the character’s skin exposed to the poison turns bright red and stings causing -1 to the character’s Dexterity.

On a failure, the character suffers -2 health per round and an additional -1 to their Dexterity. These effects continue until the character passes a Fortitude test (5 black dice), another character passes a Medicine test with 5 black dice, or the character’s death.  

Damage: Bite (2)

It was pretty nice to just come up with a monster this week after wallowing in horrid squalor, however we will return to the worst jobs of Victorian England next week with a look at Rat-Catchers. I hope you enjoy.

Bristles and Brushes- Luck and Divination

After plunging ourselves into all the disease, danger, and despair in the life of a chimney sweep, let’s consider some of the charming and strange lore connected to their profession.

The Luck of the Sweep

European superstition clings to a belief seemingly ridiculous to anyone familiar with the hard cruelty of the chimney’s sweeps life: Chimney Sweeps are Lucky!  Back in the 1700s, King George II rode in a royal procession until his horse began savagely bucking.  The king held on for dear life until a lowly chimney sweep ran forward and calmed the horse. The sweep left before the king could bestow a royal reward on his savior. Recognizing the sweeps profession by his soot-covered clothes, the king declared all sweeps to be lucky. Or in a strikingly similar story, a chimney sweep rescued King William the Conqueror from an out of control horse and cart, and that grateful king made the proclamation of luck. Of course, it could just be that the sight of a chimney sweep reminds everyone how lucky they are to not be members of that profession.

Practically any encounter with a chimney sweep (save for their visits to clean a chimney) imparts luck to those around them. If a sweep kisses a bride on her wedding day or if a sweep attends the wedding, the marriage will be happy. Passing a sweep on the street or shaking hands with a sweep transfers luck. Finally and most lucky of all is meeting a sweep on the street on New Year’s Day. Some sweeps make extra money attending weddings and selling handshakes to superstitious or desperate people. This belief opens doors that would remain shut to an ordinary member of the working-class covered from head to toe in filth.

Tephromancy and Capnomancy

In addition to cleaning and clearing a stopped up flue, chimney sweeps with a foot in the spirit world might perform oracular services. All over the world, civilizations current and ancient searched cinders, soot, ash, and smoke for clues about their future. Even Victorian Englishmen performed the rite of “Riddling the Ashes”. They spread ash over the hearth on certain holy days such as St. Mark’s Eve or Halloween and checked it the next morning for the footprints of any person in the household to die in the coming year (or the footprint of a future husband, or the footprint of a future child).

Reading the remains of a fire is called Tephramancy. Most traditions hold only the ashes of a sacrificial fire hold any meaning, but family life revolves around the hearth. A fireplace might have some very personal prognostications if someone took the time to look for them. Similarly to Tephromancy, Capnomancy divines the future through the movement of smoke. Chimney sweeps know how smoke should behave as a part of their profession. They would be the first to notice when it flows in a way it shouldn’t, gathers strangely, or turns the wrong color.

Adventure Ideas

A certain gambling den has been plagued by a string of incredible lucky streaks. Every night the house loses far too much money from bets on rat-baiting. The only connection between the lucky winners is the small dirty kid that pets the rat-terriers before they start.

No matter what precautions they take, the chimney sweeps make a mess whenever they clean out the chimney in Mrs. Swale’s boarding house. It’s odd how the soot only clings to items belonging to that mysterious tenant.

Next week, we’ll finish up by looking at a semi-mythological creature with interesting connections to the work of the chimney sweep: the Salamander.