“THE CHESHIRE CAT”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 20 February 1931, Page 8

“THE CHESHIRE CAT”

The citizens of Chester were widely hoaxed in the year of the Battle of Waterloo. The city was placarded with advertisements stating that, in view of Napoleon’s exile to St. Helena,, it was necessary to'make the island habitable; that it was suffering from a plague of rats and mice; and that in order to rid the island of the pest the Government would pay “sixteen shillings for every athletic full-grown tom-cat, ten shillings for every adult female puss, and half-a-crown for every thriving vigorous kitten.” Citizens were told to take their superfluous eats to a street in The middle of Chester at a given hour. Thousands took cats in tins, baskets, cages, and portmanteaux. The cats Went mad, and pandemonium lasted for several hours. In the furious stampede which followed the crowd’s discovery of the hoax, several thousand cats lost their lives. Tradition says that it is as a result of the attempt of Chester to sell its feline population that the Cheshire cat maintains to this day a perpetual and proverbial grin.