Ike Matthews

Known as a professional rat-catcher in Pendleton, Manchester, he wrote from direct experience rather than literary ambition. In the introduction to Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher, After 25 Years' Experience (published in 1898), he says the book grew out of roughly twenty-five years of work in rat-catching and ferreting, mostly in Manchester but also beyond it.

That book is what keeps his name alive. Part manual and part memoir, it explains how he approached infestations in warehouses and other buildings, how he kept and worked ferrets, what he had observed about the habits of rats, and what day-to-day life was like in his trade. The result is both a practical handbook and a lively piece of social history.

Little biographical information seems to survive beyond the basic dates usually attached to his name and the details he gives about his work. Even so, his writing offers a memorable voice: confident, hands-on, and closely tied to the realities of working-class urban life in nineteenth-century England.