VERMIN-KILLERS AND RAT-MATCHES. 
179 
that deeply, before you decide upon the wisdom of throwing 
the law's protective cloak over the lives of vermin ; for 
if you shield the rat — grotesque as it may appear — British 
justice will demand fair play, and compel you to protect 
the lives of every other class of vermin that afflict and 
annoy the human family ! 
I will not give my own account of the murders of rats 
destroyed yearly in London in matches and private prac- 
tice, but prefer giving and substantiating, as near as may 
be, the calculations of Mr. Henry Mayhew. After the 
deepest investigation, he came to the conclusion that there 
were no fewer than 104,000 killed annually in London in 
public matches and private training ; that is at the rate 
of 2,000 per week. At the same time bear in mind that 
nearly the whole of these are professedly country -rats, all 
of which are caught on the farms, &c., in the outskirts of 
London. 
Now, if a few individuals from the outskirts can supply 
the London market with 2,000 rats per week the year 
through, pray what must be the state of the entire country ? 
Still it may be said that some of them are sewer-rats. 
That, doubtless, is true ; but, from the best information I 
could arrive at, and for reasons I have already stated, I am 
satisfied that not four out of a hundred are caught in the 
sewers. But to make it satisfactory, and at the same time 
more easy of calculation, I will set them down at 4,000 in 
the year, thus leaving 100,000 to be brought from the out- 
skirts j or, more plainly speaking, common barn-rats. 
Let us now suppose rat-matching, &c., in London to 
be suspended for one year only, and calculate the amount of 
food they would consume during that period, and then we 
shall see a portion of the benefit conferred upon mankind by 
their destruction. Thus 100,000 rats, at 10 rats per man, 
would eat as much food as 10,000 people. Then, if we 
calculate them at the wine-glass standard, it would take 200 
bushels, or 25 quarters per day, to supply them with a wine- 
glass of grain each, at strike measure ; and which, in the 
year, would amount to 9,125 quarters. Or if we calculate 
it in the shape of bread — supposing two pounds of flour 
to make only two pounds of bread — it would supply 6,400 
poor people with a two-pound loaf each daily, the year round. 
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