300 OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



South wark." He seems to have found abundant em- 

 ployment for a considerable staff of employes, who 

 worked under his personal supervision ; and his clients 

 were to be found even amongst the most well-to-do 

 classes. His charges were half-a-guinea for ridding the 

 most elaborate bedsteads, and proportionately smaller 

 amounts for those of an inferior style, an ordinary four- 

 poster with plain furniture being undertaken for six 

 shillings. 



This was the state of affairs in London about a century 

 and a half ago, and so common was the infliction that 

 it can scarcely have been considered much of a disgrace 

 to be in need of Southall's services. The substitution 

 of plain iron bedsteads for the heavily draped wooden 

 structures used by our ancestors, and the increase of 

 habits of cleanliness in households, have greatly dimi- 

 nished the liability of respectable families to the attacks 

 of these hideous pests, and have therefore been the 

 means of more completely confining them to the poorer 

 districts and slums, where, needless to say, they are still 

 as numerous as ever. Southall charges the builders of 

 his day with introducing bugs into newly built houses, 

 by using second-hand doors, chimney-pieces, &c., obtained 

 from infested dwellings, the eggs of the insects being 

 thus unintentionally brought in ; in particular he states 

 that houses in Hanover and Grosvenor Squares were 

 thus supplied before they were inhabited. He under- 

 takes to inspect houses for intending tenants, guaran- 

 teeing to determine whether they are infested or not. 



Bugs have some natural enemies which might aid in 

 their extermination, were they not themselves too repul- 

 sive and annoying to be endured. The cockroach, as 

 already mentioned, devours them, and spiders are said 

 to do the same. There is also an insect called the 



