Ann Storey
As has been mentioned in the previous article, Mary Douglas started her breeding career with black hooded rats. At this point there were no shows for rats but a flourishing pet trade. There are adverts for pet rats in F&F before the formation of the rat fancy. Mary appears to have corresponded quite regularly with her pet homes and very soon, someone asked ‘Why should we not start a club and get classes at shows?’ This was a fork in the road moment and the first rat club became ‘The Road not Taken’. Instead Mary had read about the NMC and found the address of the former secretary Enoch Welburn, and so chose to write to him; ‘Mice and rats’ as she said ‘being first cousins and so maybe the NMC could find a corner for rat fanciers’. Indeed Mary never did want a separate club for rats, even later on when some pressure was put on her to go that way. Mr Welburn had by this time given up the post of secretary to the NMC and gone back to the cavies, largely because he found the extra work too much for him, as it was he was to die in January 1902 so may not have been well. He passed Mary’s letter onto Walter Maxey, who had taken over the post. Walter Maxey was to prove a true friend to the fledgling rat fancy. He was a railway worker and responsible for the Maxey show cage. (Its colours of Brunswick (( then engine)) Green and Signal red are the colours Walter had available in the company workshops, you still often see old steam trains in this livery today. Interestingly another possible choice was black and white, which is what the hamster fancy later chose for theirs) On the face of it, you would not have thought that a working class man from Poplar, East London would be a likely friend of the rat fancy, but he was. Aylesbury show on the 26th October 1901 was coming up and Maxey persuaded the show committee to put on a class for rats. On the day there were 15 rats entered, BIS being won by Mary herself with a black and white even. The judge that day was one Walter Maxey.
At this time, as I have mentioned previously, there were very few varieties. Albinos, black and whites, Irish blacks and a few agoutis, originally called greys, which gives you some idea of their colour. At that time what we would call hooded were called even marked. They were available in striped and spotted. Striped had a saddle similar to our hooded but there was no requirement for the saddle to be complete. Spotted evens had a spotted or broken saddle but it had to be even on both sides. The name 'Japanese' was in use outside of the fancy as it has been on and off ever since. Irish blacks were based on a supposed subspecies of Brown rat found on the West Coast called Mus hibernicus (Thompson 1837) and described as being black with a triangle of white on its chest. A Mr Isherwood, writing in F&F on the 14/11/01, said that ‘the Irish rat is about the same size as the others and is almost jet black at first. This colour develops in to a beautiful bronze, and below the hair a certain greyness is perceptible. The underneath part is usually white, but whether this condition existed originally or is the result of crossing the breed I can’t say. I know by mating two with just a thin streak of white I got some like their parents and some with even less white on them.’
Agoutis all seem to be of wild extraction and unsurprisingly they were very wild. Early on, Mary received three agoutis from a friend up North. These had been found as babies and fostered onto a tame doe. Mary said that these became fairly tame (but not enough to be shown), but their offspring became increasingly more tame and their coats improved enough to exhibit them. This was not unusual, it was quite common for both mouse and rat fanciers to introduce wild blood from time to time.
Following on from Aylesbury Mary wrote to Walter about having the rats as a permanent fixture. He agreed, ‘providing there were a fair number of fanciers who would take rats up’.
Two classes for rats were put on at the Blackburn and District Fanciers Show which had been staging classes for the mice for the past 7 years. The two classes were Self or nearly Self (10 exhibits and AOV (13 exhibits), won again by Mary, with a black and white even, possibly the same one, and judged once again by Walter Maxey. However, in his show report he had this to say;
‘If rat exhibitors wish their fancy to make headway they must send their rats out in suitable show cages, so that they can be easily got at by the judge and seen by the public. Several good rats were shown in bird cages and could not be seen or got at. Exhibitors will also do well to send out very tame specimens that will not object to being handled and keep those at home that are liable to bite.’
In fact he made many comments in his critiques about cages (including one where he couldn’t see the rat at all!) and about rats needing taming.
(Indeed, a Maxey cage was later designed for rats. This was larger obviously, being 9” square at the base, although there was a move at one point to make it a bit smaller for ease of transport. This seems to have been rejected though. The Maxey cage for rats seems to have come into use quite early on.)
The NMC AGM was also held at this show and it was resolved ‘That the Hon Sec when writing for mouse classes to the various shows, should try to get a couple of rat classes provided, and, if these get filled, to increase the classification and any specials collected by the Hon Sec for these classes should be confined to the members of the NMC.‘
At the time, the Hon sec was expected to write many letters, both answering queries and applying for shows. Fortunately this was made possible by a more active postal service than we have now. Most places had more than one delivery per day and it was possible to get a letter the same day that it was posted.
It’s important to remember here that all shows gave out prize money, so that asking a Fanciers’ Society to put on classes meant a financial outlay for that Society, something they would not be happy about were that class to make a loss. The NMC was not at this point running its own shows although the club and its various members often agreed to ‘guarantee’ the prize money for those shows in order to get classes put on. Prize money, far from the trifling amount you hear of in those fancies that still have it now, was considerable, usually paying out down to 4th place and starting at 6 Shillings (30p) for a first at this time. Entry was usually 1s. Remember that the average member was probably earning no more than £1 a week. Specials, in the form of rosettes, cups, medals and even extra prize money were frequently given by the clubs such as the NMC or by donation from individual members. Many were more than generous in that respect and it was normal to put the value after the cup in the show reports.
Another important point is that many exhibitors didn’t attend shows themselves. They sent their stock by rail. This enabled people to send stock all over the country for a reasonable price. However this wasn’t without problems. There were many complaints in F&F of animals that didn’t arrive in time for the show and reports of rough handling, sometimes from Railway staff.
A third show including rats was held on 12th Dec that year at East Ham, 27 rats were shown in 2 classes and MD was again the winner.
The problem with tameness comes up over and over again during the first few years. It was obvious that Mary’s idea of perfectly tame and other people’s were at odds. It was generally recorded that rats were picked out of their cages by their tails. It was recommended that they were picked up by the mid section of the tail in order to stop stripping the skin.
In April 1902, Mary makes the point that she was doing virtually all the work to get the rat fancy off the ground, including guaranteeing most of the prize money and supplying many of the entries. One prospective fancier did write to F&F at this time (18/4/02) asking about what they should look for when buying rats. Rats at this stage had no written standard so Walter Maxey gave his take on this.
‘The rat should be of good size, nice shape (not a fat, podgy specimen) but a nice, long, slim body. The ears should be of a nice tulip shape, not too small and should be free from wrinkles. Tail long in proportion to the length of the body; it should be thick at the set on, or root, taper to a fine point and be free from knots and kinks. Head similar in shape to a peg top and the eyes should be large and bold in appearance.'
Further to this he said that whites tended to have a creamy hue and self blacks a bronze tinge.
One of the most common faults apart from temperament was size, or rather lack of it, although what size is preferred or what could be done about it is not mentioned. Classes for young rats (they were not called kittens at this point; that was an NFRS term bought in by Geoff Izzard) did not appear until the second Blackburn show to support rats held in November 1902. Here a class for under 10 week old rats was held and attracted 8 exhibits. The classes we have, with mirrored adult and junior classes, were not a feature of the early fancies. Normally there would be one junior class for example for all the self cavies. The showing of young rats was not universally liked and Mary mentions that there had been ill effects, including rats dying from ‘shock’ or developing a head tilt. After this the age limit seems to have varied between 12 weeks, 13 weeks and three months depending on the show.
By 1904 there were 4 classes for rats, self, even marked, AOV and under 3 mths. A show held at Stratford got an entry of 45, which was said to be good. Mary was not a fan of the AOV class, which at the time mostly had agoutis in it, but called it a necessary evil.
Championships were also awarded although I don’t know what the criteria were. WM reports in 6/10/06 that a white doe, owned by a Mr Twort and called Snowball, was awarded one. Interestingly, his daughter owned and showed a tortoiseshell mouse, that was said to be as good as a brindle bulldog.
Rats seem to be quite sickly then. There are multiple accounts of rats dropping dead, usually put down to damp or draughts, which the owners seem to be obsessed by.
MD says in 1905 Nov 24; ‘many men, many manners, and also many forms of rattery. An indoor one is undoubtedly preferable, as rats cannot stand damp or draughts. If an outdoor rattery is adopted it must be damp proofed (in Walter Maxey’s book she recommends doing this with a mixture of tar and pitch), free from draughts and at the same time, properly ventilated or the stock will suffer from asthma and other complaints. (In a later letter Mary mentions that her rattery is prone to damp, despite being raised up on sleepers). A simple cure for draughts is to nail thin lathes on the walls and roof, and to these tack thick brown paper. A moderate degree of cold is not injurious providing that the rats are supplied with plenty of dry straw, hay or shavings for their nests. Care must be taken to change the bedding whenever the slightest damp is perceptible or sore ears will result.’
There are lots of mentions of sore or warty ears, sometimes also including the nose and tail, throughout the early rat fancy. The cause of this was unknown but blamed on a number of things including damp, ‘heating foods’, too much dry food, feeding potatoes or even drinking water. (Although Mary used drinking water, lots of breeders didn’t.) Treatment was the feeding of more green stuff (generally called green meat) and the use of antiseptic ointment, either a commercial product containing sulphur or boracic glycerine, or a homemade one of Vaseline or lard, sulphur and Jeyes fluid. We now know that it’s caused by the mange mite Notoedres muris, and it’s likely that these treatments would have had some effect.
The mythical condition ‘overheating of the blood’ which seems to have come from horses and the overfeeding of oats or new grass, was widely believed in all fancies right up until the late 20thC. It was blamed for a whole host of skin conditions in everything from mice to dogs. I can remember it being advised to put sulphur in dog’s water bowls in the summer and I had an old science teacher who thought that sulphur in your socks was a good treatment for ‘rheumatism’. Sulphur at the time was thought to ‘purify the blood’. You have to bear in mind that modern medicine was really in its infancy in the early 1900’s. The first anaesthetic had been used in 1846 and Pasteur’s Germ theory of disease wasn’t published until 1861, and even then wasn’t widely accepted. The importance of viruses , or filterable agents as they were called, was not understood and the first one wasn’t isolated until 1892. On top of this people had to pay for any clinical advice so most people were still relying in a lot of old wives tales that hadn’t changed much since the Middle Ages. Even in 1937, when James Herriott’s first book is based, he mentioned that virtually all the drugs they had were useless. There were no antibiotics or anything approaching them.
Cages were generally made from various grocery boxes and wire netting. There is a description in PRA 237 but this is a more detailed example which I’ve included for interest.
‘For ordinary living cages I’ve come to the conclusion that about 22 -24” long, 16 -20” wide and 15 “ high is a convenient size and this should be fitted with a nest box, some perches, a couple of doors and a front either or wire mesh or steel wire, and a strip of wood nailed along the bottom to prevent sawdust etc from falling out. The nest box is an important item . It should be of good size. For an ordinary cage I prefer to have it raised off the floor, so as not to encroach on the space for exercise. It should not be less than 6” deep and 9 or 10 across and should be fixed so as to leave sufficient space between the top of the nest box and the roof. There is no reason to provide a ladder. If the cage is to be used as for breeding or for a weak or sickly rat, it’s better for the nest box to rest on the floor, then there is no risk of them falling out. Plenty of perches seem to be appreciated, these should be flat, 2” wide and should run both lengthways and back to front, If they are too close together , it can be difficult to get at the rats when you want to catch them, and too near the floor and the cage is difficult to clean out. Two good sized doors should be provided, one, to communicate with the nest , should be cut into the top of the cage if the nest is raised, or in the end if the nest is on the floor. The other door, for communicating with the run is useful for cleaning, feeding etc and should be as close to the floor as possible. I have used hinged doors, fastened with a button or small hook and eye, or sliding doors running in slots. Wires or wire netting should not be more than ½” or young rats can get out. The inside of the cage should receive a coat of lime wash, to keep it sweet and to show up the colour of the rats. ‘
Following on from a query about how to keep rats; Mr Cottingham, writing in September 1906 recommended that rats were fed on boiled rice, mixed corn, potato cooked and raw, carrots, turnips, bread and household scraps. He recommends bones or wood to chew on and said that he lost 30 kittens due to overgrown teeth when he was unable to do this. He gives the gestation period as 28 days.
Mary recommended feeding oats and wheat, stale bread, cold vegetables, nuts, raw carrots and table scraps free from grease. She gives the gestation period as 21 days. She also gives a std for the Striped even: ‘A coloured hood, covering head and shoulders, cutting straight across just behind the shoulders, with a coloured stripe extending straight and unbroken without brindling from hood to tail, which may be parti-coloured. There should be no spots on the belly.
While there were no new varieties introduced to the show bench during this period, there seems to have been rumours of them from time to time. In 1903 a regular contributor, who went under the pen name of Strebor, included a report from the Zoological Society of London about a hairless rat. This had been caught in a trap at Leyton in Essex and placed in the care of a Mr Bedford. It was said to be the third of its kind that had been caught in a similar way. It was completely devoid of fur, excepting the whiskers on the muzzle. The skin was shrunken somewhat and covered with wrinkles.
In 1906 there was a report of a wild doe who apparently had a pair of horns on its head, the report was in the Countryside magazine of this stuffed specimen. While Maxey thought it could have been faked, there seemed to be many eye witnesses of the animal when it was alive, all of whom got quite irate when their accounts were doubted. Unfortunately there’s no picture with the article and I ‘ve been unable to find one.
1907 seemed to be a year of rumour and possibility where new varieties were concerned. Walter Maxey reported in April that while visiting his local livestock market he saw a chocolate rat, priced at a very fair 3d. However he didn’t buy it because he was not a rat fancier and thought that they should be able to produce them with selective breeding, hmm, if ever I wanted an eyeroll emoji on a piece of writing I could do with one now.
In March, Mary talks about a Mr Wilkes from Dronfield. He had been trying to breed dutch marked rats for some time and had sent some to Mary for her to look at. She writes ’So far he has concentrated his attention on obtaining correct head markings and has already succeeded in reducing the hood to a mere head covering, with a long wedge shaped blaze running down between the ears. As, also, the under jaw is white’. None of the rats had a saddle but the breeder did note that he had just bred a kitten with a black spot at the base of the tail. Unfortunately it was the runt. There would be many more attempts by breeders to breed dutch from what were effectively capped, even up until the late 70’s and 80’s. In the same letter, Mary writes that another breeder, A Mr Halling, had seen some broken marked rats in his local market in Birmingham. ‘Last Friday I popped into the market and saw some rats; one was an eight patched broken, the other five patched. There was a man going to buy them for fourpence each for his dog, so I told the owner I would give him sixpence. I did not see the fun of letting then go. The eight patched one has six patches underneath’.
There are intermittent reports of patched rats (that is, not hooded but patches like you might see on other animals) but they never seemed to come to anything and I’ve never seen a photo. The closest I’ve seen were bred from hooded x chin, but these would not have been those.
In July , Mary reports that a Mr Birley, who was an NMC judge, had a friend who had caught a fawn coloured rat by a pond and had had it stuffed, She also says that there had been various reports of wild fawn coloured rats from a number of places including Haddington, near the mouth of the Tyne. Walter Maxey also reported that his neighbour had seen a fawn and also a tortoisehell. Mary also says in the same letter that a friend of a friend had bred yellow and black spotted rats.....As it was, it wasn’t to be long before fawns did turn up in the fancy but more of that next time.