LONDON’S OFFICIAL RAT-CATCHER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2740, 19 February 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

LONDON’S OFFICIAL RAT-CATCHER.

CHALLENGE TO CAPTURE 1,000 IN 3 NIGHTS.

SECRET BAIT

Mr John . Jarvis, of Camberwell, who has just been appointed official ratcatcher to the London County Council at a salary of £4B 12s 6d per annum, is a rat-catcher not by profession but by instinct. Since ISO 3 each male member of his family has devoted his life to catching rats, and so it was with tho greatest confidence that on Wednesday Jarvis issued a challenge to all the rat-chatcli-ers of the kingdom to catch more of the vermin in a given time than aiiy man living, provided that neither dogs nor ferrets were employed in the hunt, Furthermore, he said that with the assistance of his uncle, Mr J. Dalton, he would undertake to catch l,0l)0 rats in three nights. As Jarvis made these challenges lie fondled half a dozen tame white rats, while his seven-year-old daughter at his side played with a couple of ferrets. li l have no son to carry on the business,” lie said, ‘‘but Kit there and her younger sister both know (pretty ■well all there is to know about catching rats. Kit often accompanies me on my hunting expeditions, and she very rarely makes a mistake. You see, anyone can kill rats, but very few understand how to catch them alive. Dead rats have no market, but for live ones I can get from 3s to 8s a dozen. FAMILY SECRET.

“The means I use for catching them alive is a family secret, known only to my people for the last four generations, i won’t tell you exactly what that secret is, but I don’t mind letting you know that it acts ver v much in the same way as chloroform does on a human being. Chloroform itself would not do, because rats don’t like it.

‘‘The bait I use is even attractive enough to waken a sleeping rat. A few moments after I have laid tho stuff down the floor .warms with the vermin. One nibble is enough to ‘dope’ any of them, and all I have to do to revive them is to dip their noses in water. Sometimes I don’t even trouble to use tho bait. Over my back I fling a huge sack connected with a trapdoor arrangement at my side. I wear noiseless boots and black clothes. “As I walk down the passages with a bull’s-eye'lantern attached to my side the rats, scared by the fight, scamper past me. As they run I can pick them up left or right hand and drqp them into the trapdoor. Gradually they work their way round to the sack on my hack. My! How they fight! Sometimes when I fancy I have a hundred I find half of them are killed by the time I arrive home. ATTACK BY A RAT.

“Not only do they fight each other, but in the basement of one of the big hotels a swarm of them actually attacked and killed one of tho best dogs I ever owned.

‘‘Once as I groped through the oui Gaiety Theatre a huge rat leajit out at me, and, fixing its teeth in mv arm, •worried me for" quite five minutes. When I had settled him I had him weighed. He turned the scale at lib 9oz. That was the biggest one I ever found, but in Wigmore-strcet lately I have come across several weighing over a. pound. I have found some big ones in Park-lane, too. I have had as many as 3,000 rats in my back yard.” Jarvis is employed in various large buildings at fixed salaries.