The Tudor Rat Catcher: England’s Most Hated Job
- Paul Rushworth-Brown
- Jul 13
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 25
Most of us recoil at the sight of a rat.
Now imagine living in a world where they were everywhere.
In Tudor England, rats were not simply an unpleasant nuisance. They infested homes, destroyed food stores, gnawed through timber and spread through crowded towns where rubbish, animals and people often lived side by side.
Wherever people gathered, rats followed.
And where there were rats, someone had to be willing to hunt them.
That person was the Tudor rat catcher.
Why Rats Thrived in Tudor England
Tudor towns offered rats almost everything they needed.
Household waste was commonly thrown into streets or open drains. Food was stored in wooden chests, sacks and poorly sealed storerooms. Livestock wandered through towns, grain was kept in barns and warehouses, and many houses had gaps beneath floors and walls.
There was no organised rubbish collection and little understanding of sanitation.
To a rat, a Tudor town was a place of shelter, warmth and endless food.
Even wealthy households were not immune. Rats could enter manor houses, inns, bakeries, warehouses and churches. They nested beneath floorboards, behind walls and inside roofs.
Once established, an infestation could quickly become almost impossible to control.
The Work of a Tudor Rat Catcher
The Tudor rat catcher worked in places most people refused to enter.
He crawled beneath floors, climbed into lofts, searched damp cellars and investigated drains, rubbish heaps and animal sheds.
His work required more than courage. A skilled rat catcher needed to understand how rats behaved.
He learned where they nested, which routes they travelled and what food would tempt them into a trap. He also needed to recognise the signs of an infestation: droppings, gnawed timber, disturbed grain and the scratching sounds that came from behind walls after dark.
Some rat catchers made their own traps. Others used smoke to drive rats from burrows and hidden spaces.
Many also worked with dogs.
Ratting Dogs and Tudor Terriers
Small, quick dogs were among the rat catcher’s most valuable tools.
Terrier-type dogs could chase rats through yards, barns and confined spaces. Their speed and instinct made them far more effective than a man trying to catch rats by hand.
When rats were forced from their hiding places, the dogs were released.
The work could be violent and chaotic. Rats scattered in every direction while the dogs chased, bit and killed them.
For the rat catcher, a good dog could mean the difference between controlling an infestation and allowing it to return.
One surviving pair of rats could quickly produce another generation. The work had to be thorough.
From Rat Catching to Rat Baiting
By the late Tudor period, rat catching had become more than a necessity. In some towns, it evolved into a brutal form of entertainment.
Known as rat baiting, the spectacle involved releasing dozens—sometimes hundreds—of rats into a pit before setting one or more dogs upon them. Crowds gathered to wager on how quickly the dogs could kill every rat. The faster the dog cleared the pit, the greater its reputation.
To modern eyes, the practice is shocking. Yet in Tudor and later Stuart England it was viewed as both sport and a demonstration of a dog's courage, speed and breeding.
Many of the same terriers employed by professional rat catchers were prized for these contests, blurring the line between practical pest control and public entertainment.
Like bear baiting and bull baiting, rat baiting reflected a society whose attitudes towards animals were very different from our own.
A Filthy and Dangerous Occupation
The danger was not limited to being bitten.
Rat catchers worked among fleas, parasites, rotting food, animal waste and stagnant water. They entered buildings where disease could spread easily, although nobody yet understood bacteria or infection in the modern sense.
Their hands were often cut and scratched. Their clothes absorbed the smell of cellars, drains and refuse.
A rat bite could become infected. Fleas could move from animals to people. Damp conditions could cause illness, while mould and decaying waste made breathing difficult.
The Tudor rat catcher faced these dangers every day, usually for very little money.
Why Rat Catchers Were Despised
Despite performing essential work, rat catchers were rarely respected.
They smelled of the places they worked. Their clothing was stained, their boots were covered in mud and waste, and they were associated with vermin, disease and filth.
People needed them, but they did not necessarily want them nearby.
This was the contradiction at the centre of the occupation.
A town might complain bitterly about rats, yet treat the man hired to remove them as though he were somehow part of the infestation himself.
The rat catcher occupied one of the lowest positions in society.
He was tolerated because he was necessary.
Rat Catching in Homes and Manor Houses
Rat catchers worked for ordinary households, but they could also be called to inns, estates, mills and manor houses.
A rat infestation inside a grain store could be devastating.
Grain represented food, income and survival. If rats contaminated or destroyed it, a family might lose part of its winter supply. A merchant could lose valuable stock, while a landowner might see profits disappear.
In a wealthy household, the arrival of rats was embarrassing as well as dangerous.
The rat catcher might therefore be quietly summoned, allowed through the back entrance and sent directly to the kitchens, cellars or storerooms.
Once his work was completed, he was expected to leave just as quietly.
The Rat Catcher’s Poor Reputation
Rat catchers were sometimes accused of dishonesty.
People suspected some of deliberately carrying rats from one property to another in order to create future work. Whether this happened regularly is difficult to prove, but the suspicion reflected how little trust surrounded the occupation.
A rat catcher might also be blamed if the rats returned, even when the real cause was poor food storage or the filthy conditions of the building.
He was expected to solve a problem created by the way everyone else lived.
If he succeeded, few praised him.
If he failed, everyone noticed.
The Forgotten Workers of Tudor England
History remembers Tudor kings, queens, executions and wars.
It remembers Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and the struggle between Catholics and Protestants.
It rarely remembers the man crawling beneath a kitchen floor with a trap in one hand and a dog waiting behind him.
Yet Tudor society depended upon people like him.
The rat catcher protected food, homes and businesses. He entered places others avoided and faced dangers they did not understand.
His name was rarely recorded.
His life left little mark in official documents.
But every loaf of bread saved from a grain store, every household protected from infestation and every warehouse cleared of vermin owed something to his work.
Why the Tudor Rat Catcher Mattered
The Tudor rat catcher reminds us that history was not built only by those who wore crowns or commanded armies.
It was also built by ordinary people who performed difficult, unpleasant and dangerous work because someone had to do it.
They were not celebrated.
They were not wealthy.
Most were forgotten almost as soon as they died.
But Tudor England would have been far dirtier and far more dangerous without them.
History remembers kings and battles.
I prefer to remember the ordinary people who carried the weight of their world.
History in Fiction - The forgotten lives of ordinary people have always fascinated me. While kings and queens dominate the history books, it was the labourers, craftsmen, servants and outcasts who kept England functioning from one day to the next. In my historical novel, Skulduggery, I explore that hidden world through the eyes of people whose lives were shaped by the harsh realities of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. Occupations like the rat catcher, together with the customs, punishments and everyday struggles of the time, provide the authentic backdrop against which the story unfolds.Although Skulduggery is a work of fiction, many of its occupations, social conditions and historical details are grounded in extensive research, offering readers a glimpse into a world that was often brutal, unforgiving and deeply human.If you enjoy discovering the forgotten stories behind history, you'll find many of those lives woven throughout the pages of Skulduggery.
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History isn't only about kings and battles. It is also about the ordinary men, women and children whose lives were shaped by the world around them.
If you enjoyed this article, explore more true stories from Tudor and Stuart England, discover the research behind my historical fiction, or follow the free serial, The Thomas Rushworth Chronicles.
Continue exploring here:https://www.paulrushworthbrown.com/stories
About the Author
Paul Rushworth-Brown is an Australian historical novelist, researcher and creator of The Human Cost of History. Through carefully researched articles and historical fiction, he explores the forgotten lives of ordinary people whose experiences have often been overlooked by history.
His work spans Tudor and Stuart England, colonial Australia and the people who lived through some of history's most turbulent periods. He is also the author of The Thomas Rushworth Chronicles, a free historical serial set in Yorkshire between 1590 and 1603.
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