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.