WAR AGAINST RATS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22505, 25 February 1935, Page 18

WAR AGAINST RATS

BIG DRIVE IN LONDON SOUTHWARDS GREAT PEST RODENT ON DINNER TABLES. Almost under the shadow of Southwark Cathedral' in London, families crowded in tiny rooms have become so accustomed to the attentions of rate that the vermin are almost cynically disregarded, says a correspondent *f the Daily Telegraph. It is largely in this quarter, and in. an area north of the Elephant and Castle,! that the Southwark Borough Council's drive against was lately to take place. A visit to some of the narrow courts off the Borough High street confirmed the statements made by Mr Gillian, chairman of the Public Health Committee, that "rats were found on dinner tables and that some mothers were afraid that their children might be attacked. In one of the worst courts, already condemned for slum clearance, the householders said that rats were commonplace. " I've lived here for 30 years and there've always been rats," a woman said. " They come up through the floorboards. I've got used to them now. They don't run upstairs, but stay in the room where there's food about." She spoke somewhat disparagingly of municipal efforts to combat the pest. Pointing to a lean, carroty cat prowling in the yard, she said: " That's all I need to catch them. He caught two this morning. He's a terror." TWO RATS IN BREAD PAN. Next door, in a house reputed to be over-run by rats, two white-faced little boys told all about them with gusto. " Mother found two in the bread pan when she came down at 5 this morning," they said. " The" loaf was nearly all eaten. We see them running round the" room sometimes, and often they leave a nasty trail of mud and dirt." The boys said they were not afraid of the rats, but " didn't like them." When I said they (would be leaving their ratridden homes as soon as alternative accommodation was available—within the next five years—they agreed that a new house would be grand. This house and most of the others had fierce ratdevouring cats. All the people said they would not be without them. Another aspect of the problem was given by Dr W. Stott, medical officer of health lor Southwark. " There are many difficulties" he said. " The houses concerned were built before the London Buildings Act of 1894, and are built on ' bare earth.' There is no 6in concrete site under these houses, as that Act made compulsory, and the rats come along old drains and up through the floorboards. HANDICAPPED BY THE LAW. "People will not complain to me at the town hall about rate in their houses. They seem to fear that by so doing they will be involved in trouble with their landlords and will be given notice. During Rat Week last November, out of 170,000 people in' the borough, fewer than 20 applied at the town hall for free rat bait!" Dr Stotl's staff is steadily poisoning thousands of rats in old 6ewers and drains, but is handicapped by the existing law. This makes it the duty of the tenant, and not the owner of property, to make it rat proof. For poor tenants this is impossible. The rat that is invading the poorer homes at Southwark is the brown rat, always on the look-out for food. Southwark is going to attack it with publicity, poison, the cutting-off of food supplies and every other known method of extermination. .