Modern Times and The Rat

(needless to say, a work in process. . .)
Scholars of the Victorian period (1837-1901) are fortunate, because the physical remains of 19th century culture have been carefully preserved and documented. Not only have the more permanent artifacts survived, but more fragile paper items are still intact. Ephemera is precisely that: ephemeral. (1) Very little ancient ephemera has survived, but historians have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Victorian paper: trade cards, scrap, photographs, menus, calling cards, and more.

A. England

Rattus norvegicus probably arrived in England from the Continent at the start of the 18th century. The new rats were referred to as the 'Hanoverian rat' in honor of German George I, an extremely unpopular monarch. "The sewer-rat is the common brown or Hanoverian rat, said by the Jacobites to have come in with the first George, and established itself after the fashion of his royal family; and undoubtedly such was about the era of their appearance." (2) Not the most auspicious start, but the brown rat quickly made itself at home. By the 19th century, the smaller ship rat, Rattus rattus, was driven almost to extinction and Rattus norvegicus had conquered England.

The cities of Victorian England were, to be frank, filthy. The streets were sooty, dim, and covered in offal. An excerpt from London's Morning Chronicle, dated 1849, describes a section of the Thames in detail:
. . .covered with a scum almost like a cobweb, and prismatic with grease. In it
float large masses of green rotting weed, and against the posts of the bridges are swollen carcasses of dead animals, almost bursting with the gases of putrefaction. Along its shores are heaps of indescribable filth, the phosphoretted smell from which tells you of the rotting fish there, while the oyster shells are like pieces of slate from their coating of mud and filth. (3)

With ample shelter and food, brown rats were now a fact of life in England's cities, indeed, the animals would have been almost impossible to escape. Entire London families lived on the income derived from catching rats, alive or dead, and rat 'baiting' became a popular sport among the lower classes. Millions of brown rats were killed in the notorious pits, where terrier dogs were judged on the number of frightened rats they could slaughter in an allotted time. The more dead rats, the more infamous and valuable the 'ratter'. For those interested in learning more about this barbaric blood sport, Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor provides a horrifying illustration. (4)

Victorians of all classes were avidly interested in the natural world around them, including a sentimental passion for the pets that shared their homes. Although dogs were by far the most popular pet of the Victorian age, domestic rats first made their official appearance in England after the 1860s in the form of Jack Black, official Rat Catcher and Mole destroyer to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Jack Black, in his capacity as rat catcher, and provider of animals for the pits, was able to amass a collection of exotically colored rats, including the rare albino, or pink-eyed white. Black claims to have bred fawn, black, white, and marked rats in various shades. The more beautiful animals were often sold as pets and Black claimed he sold many rats to young girls who kept their new charges in squirrel cages. The more sophisticated ladies of court kept their rats in dainty gilded cages, and even Queen Victoria herself kept a rat or two. The fancy proper did not begin until Mary Douglas asked for permission from the National Mouse Club to bring her pet rats to an exhibition at Aylesbury on October 24th, 1901. Her black and white hooded Rattus norvegicus won 'Best in Show', and the rat fancy was formally launched. (5)

B. America

Wild Norway rats probably first landed in America during the Revolutionary War, c. 1776. Once again the larger, more aggressive rats quickly carved a niche for themselves, driving away native rodent species and smaller Rattus rattus. European ships have been landing in the New World since the 15th century, a time when shipboard rat infestations were common. Zooarchaeology has not been kind to rattus, and we must presume Norway rats did not arrive in America until the 18th century based only on theory.

Lest anyone believe American cities were cleaner than their English sisters, an 1856 sanitation report from New York City mentioned children who were paid to sweep paths through the garbage on Broadway so pedestrians could cross without being covered in filth. (6) During the year 1880, 15,000 dead horses had to be hauled off New York City's streets, and bathrooms were still considered a luxury. (7) The following quotation is taken from the City's first Annual Report in 1866:
The streets were uncleaned; manure heaps, containing thousands of tons, occupied piers and vacant lots; sewers were obstructed; houses were crowded, and badly ventilated, and lighted; privies were unconnected with sewers, and overflowing; stables and yards were filled with stagnant water, and many dark and damp cellars were inhabited. The streets were obstructed, and the wharves and piers were filthy and dangerous from dilapidation. . . (8)

In short, a wild Norway rat paradise.

Rat baiting was so ubiquitous in America, the sport was even referred to by Congressman Conkling during a debate in 1879. Children roamed the Manhatten dumps at night with specially fashioned iron tongs, as live rats could bring anywhere from five to twelve cents a piece. Dangerous employment; according to Denis Lynch, cats and small dogs who wandered into the dumps after dark were devoured by hungry rats swarming over the trash heaps in search of vegetable scraps and gristle. (9)

The first domestic strain of rats 'officially' introduced to the United States is believed to have been the famous albino Wistar rats, brought over from England at the end of the 19th century for research purposes at the Philadelphia Wistar Institute. Almost all strains of lab rat in use today, including the Long-Evans and Sprague-Dawley strains, originate from the United States and the first Wistar rats. However, domestic rats were clearly in America before the Wistars, as can be seen in the plethora of Victorian ephemera and bric-a-brac depicting tame albino animals. The following sections are a survey of rat-themed 19th century material, from trade cards to spill vases. The bulk of the material is American; however, a few French and British items are included.

1. Trade Cards

One popular Victorian hobby on both sides of the Atlantic was the scrap album. These 'scrap books' were often very ornate, with tooled leather covers and gilded lettering, and were left out in the parlor for visitors to admire. 'Scraps' began as simple engravings on paper, designed to be carefully cut out and used as decoration in albums and on decoupage projects such as folding screens. When chromolithography was invented in the 1860s, the plain scraps were transformed into brightly colored confections. New machines could stamp and emboss the pictures to create a three-dimensional appearance, and the die-cut process created sheets of figures connected together with only small strips of paper, a great improvement. The beautiful new scrap was used to decorate album pages, which might also include newspaper clippings, novelty carte de visites, notes from friends, calling cards, pressed flowers, pictures clipped from magazines, and other ephemera, including the odd tradecard.

During the 19th century, America was experiencing tremendous growth, and new inventions constantly promised the public to save time, spare labor, and revolutionize lives - from the humble eggbeater to the lightbulb. Advertisers printed 'trade cards' to better hawk their wares, small squares of paper originally printed in black and white with pictures and slogans.

In 1876, the Philadelphia Centennial opened, and the trade cards suddenly evolved - and a craze was born. Color lithography was cheap enough to allow for mass production of the colored cards, and as the cost decreased, advertisers were able to increase the number of cards printed. Consumers eagerly collected the new, garish cards for their scrap books, and advertisers knew an interesting, bright card would be pasted into a album and saved for years, providing a constant reminder of the advertised product. Trade cards were now sent through the mail, given away by grocers, tucked inside product packaging, and handed out on the street to potential customers.

By the turn of the century, the scrap and tradecard fad had died away, and thousands of carefully crafted albums were relegated to the basement and attic. Recently, the cards have experienced a renaissance, and are once more eagerly collected by ephemera aficionados. Almost every subject imaginable can be found illustrated on tradecards: racial prejudices of the day, Victorian attitudes towards children and animals, the status of women, and some scenes no one has been able to figure out!

Although not a common subject, rats, both domestic and wild, made an appearance on tradecards. The thumbnails below are a few examples of the more benevolent rat-themed trade cards in the author's collection. Cards were also printed to promote poisons and traps, or with 'humorous' scenes rather detrimental to the rat involved, but the more interesting cards document the place rats held in the hearts of Victorian humans. Whimsy and fun are hallmarks of these cards, from illustrations of popular children's tales to the dignified Rat Family on a picnic outing.
2. Die-Cut Scrap

The scrap pictured below was purchased at a 2001 antiques fair in France; however, the original provenance of the pieces is unknown. The scrap dates from after 1860s, and was die-cut and embossed to create a greater sense of realism.

French Rat-Themed Scrap No.1 French Rat-Themed Scrap No.2 French Rat-Themed Scrap No.3
3. Carte de Visites

The carte de visite, or 'visiting card', was developed in 1854 by French photographer A.A. Disderi. Images were produced on a glass plate, and the resulting photograph was mounted on thick cardstock, approximately 2.5 x 4 inches. The cards were never used in the United States as actual calling cards, but were distributed by the fashionable to their friends, who tucked the photographs into a special carte de visite album, also kept on display in the parlor. After the Civil War, larger 'cabinet cards' became more popular, and gradually overshadowed the carte de visite. The Victorians loved photography, and the typical carte album held pictures of friends and family, the famous (signed portraits of Lincoln were quite popular), and novelty cards depicting animals, babies, and humorous scenes. The cabinet card below was produced by an unknown traveling photographer c. 1890, and depicts a patient albino rat perched in a bird cage by the side of a trained spaniel.
4. A Spelling Puzzle

The 19th century puzzle pictured below is lithographed onto three thin sheets of pasteboard, presumably for a small child to arrange in order to create the picture and spell out RAT. The author has only seen one other example of the puzzle - during 2002 a series of the puzzles, including RAT, was discovered in an old attic trunk; however, the four other examples depict fairy tales and have heavy moral overtones. For example, the Red Riding Hood puzzle is created of four pieces, and when properly aligned, a charming illustration is formed with the word OBEY. Why the word RAT was included in the series remains a mystery.
1. Ephemera is defined as, "[p]rinted matter of passing interest." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed. 2000).

2. 2 Henry Mayhew, London Labor and the London Poor 431 (Dover 1968) (1861)

3. Henry Mayhew, Visit to the Cholera District of Bermondsey, Morning Chronicle (London) September 24, 1849.

4. 3 Henry Mayhew, London Labor and the London Poor 1-22 (Dover 1968) (1861). The section "Destroyers of Vermin" discusses rat baiting, rat catching, and conversations with noted rat aficionados, including Jack Black.

5. Nick Mays, The Proper Care of Fancy Rats 53 (1993).

6. Paul Trachtman, Hero for Our Time, Smithsonian 39 January, 2002.

7. Andy Blumberg, Public Health's Fee Writes History of "Big Apple" in Garbage, 24 Johns Hopkins Gazette 15 (1995).

8. 1867 First Tenement Law, The Living City/ New York City (visited December 30th, 2001) <http://156.145.78.54/htm/themes/tenements/1867.htm>.

9. Denis Lynch, The Wild Seventies 306-11 (2nd ed. 1971).