Rats!

By that time we can assume the southern bays area had a significant population of kiore, the so-called ‘Pacific rat’ carried by Polynesian voyagers as a food source. This rat was smaller than the two species of rats introduced by Europeans and it is now very rare. It is likely that they were harvested in the southern bays region in times past. In those times people had extensive knowledge of how to trap and prepare them, sometimes preserving them in their own fat. This was a dish called huahua, very like a modern terrine, and was also made from many bird species. The rats, or birds, would be stored in tahā (gourds).

Helpful ideas for the elimination of the pests often included the use of dangerous poisons. Such as this guidance from 1845 in the New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian:

“Melt hogs' lard in a bottle, plunged in water heated to about 150 deg. F.; introduce into it half an ounce of phosphorus for every pound of lard, then add a pint of proof spirit, or whiskey; cork the bottle firmly after the contents have been heated to 150 deg., taking it at the same time out of the water bath, and agitate smartly till the phosphorus becomes uniformly diffused, forming a milky-looking liquid. 

This mixture being evolved, with occasional agitation at first, will afford a white compound of phosphorus and lard, from which the spirit spontaneously separates, and may be poured off to be used again, for none of it enters into the combination; but it merely serves to communicate the phosphorus, and to diffuse it in very small particles through the lard. 

This fatty compound, on being warmed very gently, may be poured out into a mixture of wheat flour and sugar incorporate therewith, and then flavoured with oil of rhodium, or not, at pleasure. 

The flavour may be varied with oil of aniseed, &c. This dough, being made into pellets, is to be laid in rat-holes. 

By its luminousness in the dark, it attracts their notice, and being agreeable to their palates and noses, it is readily eaten, and proves certainly fatal; they soon are seen issuing from their lurking-places, to seek for water to quench their burning thirst and bowels ; and they commonly die near the water. 

They continue to eat it as long as it is offered to them, without their being deterred by the fate of their fellows, as is known to be the case with arsenical doses”. 

Those looking for something less risky but possibly less likely to kill rats were advised to sauté sliced corks! 

As the years went by public and Council concern continued and the rats continued to thrive. In 1902 a bounty of three pence per head (actually per tail) was offered to those willing to collect this proof of a kill and take it to the municipal incinerator in Miramar. The Evening Post reported in May that the average numbers received had been running at 50 a day for some weeks. The paper seemed to think this a success but evidence from later years suggests the ‘crusade’ as the paper called it failed to reduce the rat population significantly. 

The problem persisted into the 1920s with the Director of Public Hygiene helpfully suggesting using equal amounts of ‘finely powdered white arsenic’ and cheese as the basic ingredients of rat poison. Glycerine, water, cornmeal, aniseed and colouring helped its effectiveness. No type of cheese was specified. One imagines cheddar was preferred.

An outbreak of plague in Australia in 1921 intensified Council efforts. The Town Clerk published advertisements ordering that “all Citizens will have all rubbish, old and waste material now upon their premises removed at once, and prevent any accumulation for the future, as these accumulations are undoubtedly an encouragement to rats [and] that they will also take every means to destroy rats, as these animals are now known to be the great carriers of the plague germ”. 

So far so good. But there was less enthusiastic support for the Council plans for “house-to-house visitations” by Inspectors. 

Although the Town Clerk told people “The Mayor hopes that Citizens will cordially co-operate, and assist the Council in carrying out these requirements” he found it wise to also threaten that “legal action will be promptly taken in all cases where there is any neglect”. And for those with rubbish needing to be taken away? Council was willing to help at ‘a small charge of 2 shillings will be made for the removal of quantities not exceeding three cubic feet”. 

The approach had been satirized years before by the Observer’s cartoonist with a series called ‘The Tidy Housewife and the Prying Prig’ showing a bowler-hatted rat inspector trying the patience of a woman until she can take it no longer: (Pictured right)

In just three weeks in late 1921, the inspectors made 3061 visits and served 175 notices on ‘owners and occupiers requiring the removal of refuse, etc.', along with also 142 notices requiring the extermination of rats.  

In 1921 the Evening Post reported, along with news of 221 rats being removed from a single cellar in Mercer St, that ‘rats are present in great force on Goat Island, Island Bay’ and that action was to be taken ‘to ‘imshi’ these pests out of their marine abode’. ‘Imshi’ is military slang, taken from Arabic, meaning to ‘get out’. 

Not everyone complied: by January the next years more than thirty business people were summoned to appear at the Magistrates Court to answer charges of harbouring rats.  

The City Archives record that in Island Bay in 1931 Mrs McGowan of 117 The Parade requested the WCC Sanitary Dept inspect the fruit & vegetable shop near her house as it was 'over run with rats.'. She stated although her neighbours were scrupulously clean the nearby shop was attracting rats and was 'a menace to the health of the people in the district.'

Poison and traps were not the only weapons against rats. Terriers were used against them finding and killing with astonishing efficiency.

An elderly friend told me as a child she remembered over 80 years ago the rat catcher regularly visited her family residence in Tory Street and let loose several fox terriers to run in the ceiling, through the rooms and underneath the building. "Do not touch those dogs, they're filthy," instructed her grandparents.

Council Archives record of Mr Miller the Rat Catcher reporting to the Chief Sanitary Inspector on putting dogs in under houses. The dogs were not entirely effective: in November 1935 a resident of 128 Adelaide Road applied to the City Engineer asking for a repeat visit as the rats continued to terrify her and she could not sleep. 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same. By September of 1942 as war raged the Evening Post was again reporting on concerns about rat numbers but tending to downplay the issue despite suggesting a possible cause was ‘a larger population more careless than it should be about rats’ – a reference no doubt to New Zealand and United States soldiers in town. 

It lamented the loss of anti-rat measures as a result of the war: “The City Council used to distribute a rat poison free to those who had rats or even thought they had them. It was cheap to make up, practically harmless to other than rats and mice and of proved efficacy, but the war clamped down on the essential ingredient, barium carbonate, so no free supplies have been available at all since July. The average issue was about 50 tins, holding three or four doses, each month, and the poison book shows that no locality was particularly favoured by rats. 

The poison went to buildings all through the city area and out to Seatoun and Island Bay in their directions and back to Karori and Wadestown in the others; naturally the waterfront had an edge on the rest of Wellington, for rats always have been found where ships are, and always will be found there. On top of the cutting off of poison supplies, "the official rat catcher was called into camp, and so for a time Wellington had no expert steadily on the job to give advice or direct help, or to go in with his gas outfit when things got so bad that drastic cures had to be made”. 

These drastic cures are not detailed, but the Evening Post reported that ‘a full-time ratcatcher is now at work’, before going on to blame the problem on people throwing away their left-over lunches in inappropriate ways – that is, in bins without lids. Even a brand new building was affected: 

“If ever there was a design that should be rat-proof it is the design of this building, and the legitimate rat diet inside is mostly files and documents, and a few left-overs of red tape; yet rats have got into that building, have chewed files, even in strongrooms, and they worry the girls on night work”.  

The need for a further Council campaign was underscored in July 1943 when The Evening Post reported the parents of a 10-month old baby were awakened by screams from a rat attack in Oriental Bay. The rat had nibbled the baby's fingers.

WCC initiated a campaign to urge citizens to declare war on rats in 1943. Pamphlets were distributed to households instructing Wellingtonians to clean up rubbish, close off access points and eliminate rats with traps & poison. Cyanide gas was another method used. 

Rats have continued to be an issue since the 1940s but never again resulted in mass campaigns until, in this century the emphasis shifted from human heath to the welfare of our decimated birds, lizards, wētā and other native species.