In Victorian London, rats were everywhere - in the sewers, in homes, in food markets, spreading disease and terrorizing the city. Enter the rat catchers, a strange breed of professionals who developed increasingly bizarre methods to hunt rats and became unexpected celebrities in the process.

Jack Black, Queen Victoria's official rat catcher, was the most famous. He wore a scarlet waistcoat covered in cast-iron rats and carried live rats in his pockets as he walked through London streets. He would catch rats with his bare hands, breed the unusually colored ones to sell as pets to aristocrats, and perform rat-catching demonstrations for crowds. Victorian ladies kept his fancy rats as fashionable pets while their poorer neighbors were being overrun.

Rat catchers used terrier dogs, ferrets, poison, traps, and their bare hands to kill thou ...