The Victorian Rat Catchers Who Became Celebrities - And Their Bizarre Methods for Killing Thousands

In Victorian London, rats were everywhere - in the sewers, in homes, in food markets, spreading disease and terrorizing the city. Enter the rat catchers, a strange breed of professionals who developed increasingly bizarre methods to hunt rats and became unexpected celebrities in the process.Jack Black, Queen Victoria's official rat catcher, was the most famous. He wore a scarlet waistcoat covered in cast-iron rats and carried live rats in his pockets as he walked through London streets. He would catch rats with his bare hands, breed the unusually colored ones to sell as pets to aristocrats, and perform rat-catching demonstrations for crowds. Victorian ladies kept his fancy rats as fashionable pets while their poorer neighbors were being overrun.Rat catchers used terrier dogs, ferrets, poison, traps, and their bare hands to kill thousands of rats. They collected rats for "rat-baiting" - a blood sport where men bet on how many rats a dog could kill in a pit. Some rat catchers claimed to have killed over 100,000 rats in their careers. They had secret techniques passed down through families and competed to see who could clear buildings fastest.This episode explores the disgusting, dangerous, and weirdly glamorous world of Victorian rat catching, how these men became working-class celebrities, and why their profession reveals so much about Victorian London's filthy underbelly.Keywords: weird history, Victorian London, rat catchers, Victorian era, historical jobs, pest control history, Victorian society, Jack Black rat catcher, unusual occupations, 19th century LondonPerfect for listeners who love: Victorian history, unusual jobs, gross historical facts, working-class heroes, and the weird ways people made a living.Another gross episode from Weird History - where pest control was a spectator sport.