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CHAPTER Y. 
THE SEWER-RATS AXD RAT-CATCHERS OF LONDON. 
I AM not an advocate for the indiscriminate slaughter of 
rats ; for I am one of those who believe that nothing, how- 
ever repulsive in appearance or noxious its habits, has been 
created but for some wise purpose. Hence I maintain that 
when rats are in the sewers, fulfilling the duties for which 
they were created, they are rendering mankind a most essen- 
tial service in devouring the refuse of animal and vegetable 
matter which would otherwise go to putrefaction and breed 
a multiplicity of diseases, or rather an incessant plague. 
Under such circumstances, therefore, for any man to go into 
their haunts, and make them prisoners for the purposes of 
gain, or to kill them where they are, is neither more nor less 
than animal-murder. But, on the other hand, when they 
burst their boundaries, and intrude on the territories of man, 
to the danger of his children, his castle, and his properties, 
then he is not only justified in repelling them, as he would 
any other ravenous beast, but in killing them also, in order 
to save himself, his family, and his properties from their 
further inroads and devastations. 
It may be asked, if the rats in the sewers were left unmo- 
lested, would not the number of deaths among them (which 
of necessity must be very numerous) produce a deleterious 
efiect similar to the animal and vegetable refuse already 
spoken of ? My reply would be, " Certainly not, for the best 
of reasons — because rats always eat their dead as well as the 
aged and infirm. Therein they prove not only a remedy 
for the evil, but a social, healthy, and orderly community." 
However, let me leave this, and proceed with the accounts 
of Jumper and Jem, the rat-catchers of the sewers. They, 
with Jem's man Jack, are the only rat-catchers I can hear 
of in the sewers of London ; Jumper's apprentice, to use his 
own words, having long since " cut it." 
The London newspapers lately gave some account of a 
man who was enjoying his own mode of existence as much 
