Jack Black

Jack Black, woodcut print from London Labour and the London Poor (Vol. 3), 1851

Jack Black was a rat-catcher and mole destroyer from Battersea, England during the middle of the 19th century. At the time, England was ravaged by a massive population of rats that disrupted crops and spread disease, and Black's rat killing abilities made him a minor celebrity and he advertised himself as Queen Victoria's official rat-catcher. Though he has been called the rat's "most notorious enemy", he did not kill all rats. Black said the rat work came naturally to him. He earned himself various jobs catching rats on private property, and he also supplied live rats to pubs for rat-baiting contests, a popular mid-Victorian activity of placing bets on the number of rats a dog could kill.

When Jack Black caught unusually coloured rats, he bred them to establish new colour varieties. He decorated his home-bred domesticated rats with ribbons and sold them as pets, mainly "to well-bred young ladies to keep in squirrel cages", he said. Beatrix Potter is believed to have been one of his customers, and she dedicated the book Samuel Whiskers to her rat of the same name. By 1869, Charles Baudelaire called the rat "the poor child’s toy" in his poetry collection Le Spleen de Paris. By 1901, rats were so popular as pets that Mary Douglas received permission from England's National Mouse Club to bring her pet rats to an exhibition at the Aylesbury Town Show on 24 October 1901. Her black and white hooded Rattus norvegicus won "Best in Show," and the Rat Fancy was formally launched.

The original Rat Fancy lasted until 1931, as part of the National Mouse and Rat Club. The modern Rat Fancy was revived in 1976 with the formation of the National Fancy Rat Society, and the fancy rat spread around the world. Nowadays, fancy rats are widely accepted as pets and exhibition animals.