Jack Black (Pied Piper)
Jack Black (born between 1800 and 1810; died after 1850) was a British exterminator who was active in London in the mid-19th century , primarily as a pied piper in the service of Queen Victoria .
Act as a pied piper
Jack Black's life data are unknown, but he gave the British journalist and sociologist Henry Mayhew information about his life and activities in 1850 . Mayhew published his portrait of Black in the third volume of his book series London Labor and the London Poor . According to this, Jack Black was born in the first decade of the 19th century. He had already hunted rats at the age of nine on behalf of farmers and shortly afterwards became a professional rat catcher, mainly working in the Regent's Park area . Black initially used ferrets for hunting. At the age of 15, Black dedicated himself to raising songbirds, which he sold to both animal lovers and butchers. Black was quite successful in the bird trade for three years, but then got interested in rats again. He trained a Welsh Terrier for hunting , which he also successfully used in dog breeding.
In 1835 Jack Black worked for the first time on behalf of the City of London, which employed several exterminators to fight the plague of rats in the city's parks. When the royal exterminator died, Black was named his successor. Black was now active throughout the entire city of London. He extolled himself as " Her Majesty Queen Victoria's rat and mole catcher " and had his own uniform tailored, which he wore on the streets to offer his services. He attracted a great deal of attention with his wide belt on which he had attached several cast iron rats. According to his own account, he couldn't take a step without a large crowd of onlookers following him.
Work as a rat breeder
Jack Black usually killed rats with his own mixture of poisons, but he also regularly caught rats alive to demonstrate his skills. He sold some of the animals to the promoter Jimmy Shaw, who was one of the best-known providers of the advice-baiting shows popular in the 19th century , in which rats were mauled by dogs for the amusement of the audience.
Selected specimens that stood out by a particularly beautiful coat color, Jack Black kept to himself and began the breeding of domesticated brown rats ( Rattus norvegicus ), from which only a few decades as pet -held color rat ( Rattus norvegicus domesticus ) evolved. Today Jack Black is considered to be the first breeder to domesticate and sell pet rats .
Black's tame and colorful animals were also admired by many wealthy families, with numerous young girls buying his rats and keeping them in squirrel cages. Among his clients, the young should Beatrix Potter have counted that in 1908 her book The Tale of Samuel Whiskers : (German History of Bernhard mustache had dedicated their own rat Sammy).
literature
- Henry Mayhew : London Labor and the London Poor: Volume III . Dover Publications, New York 1968, ISBN 0-486-21936-4 , pp. 11-20.
- Birgitta Edelman: From Trap to Lap: The Changing Sociogenic Identity of the Rat . In: Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacy (John Knight, ed.). Berg, Oxford 2005, ISBN 1-85973-733-1 , pp. 120-124.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ " VR Rat and mole destroyer to Her Majesty", quoted from Mayhew: London Labor and the London Poor: Volume III , p. 11.
- ^ "When the belt was done, I had a great success; for, bless you, I couldn't go a yard without a crowd after me ", quoted in Mayhew: London Labor and the London Poor: Volume III , p. 16.
- ↑ Steven B. Kayne, Michael H. Jepson: Veterinary pharmacy . Pharmaceutical Press, London 2004, ISBN 0-85369-534-2 , p. 439.
- ^ The Independent : The secret life of rats , October 13, 2007.
- ↑ Maud Ellmann: Writing like a rat . Critical Quarterly, Volume 46, Issue 4, 2004, pp. 59-76.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Black, Jack |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British exterminator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | between 1800 and 1810 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | after 1850 |