RAT KING IN TROUBLE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1705, 28 April 1917, Page 4

RAT KING IN TROUBLE.

HOW THE WAR HITS HIS BUSINESS. “The amount of damage done by rats in Britain yearly has been estimated at £10,000,000. Any drag on the work of slaying these vermin, therefore, may be regarded as serious.” Mr B. L. Phillips is the King of the Ratcatchers, and he indicated to a Daily News representative recently that he has a definite grievance in the official refusal to exempt the three men whom he regards as indispensable, and he bases his argument on both national and personal grounds. He started funds tor providing disabled men with walk-ing-sticks and sailors with binoculars, and he has destroyed vermin free at the Union Jack Club.

Notwithstanding the shrinkage of staff, his linn lias killed 400,000 rats in a year, in addition to cockroaches, beetles, ete,, in incalculahlo millions. He has annual con(raets with big' shipping and railway eompanies, hospitals in nearly all the big towns, and other institutions. “If (he work ean be done without us,” he inquires, “why do these people employ us year after year? There are other ratcatchers and vermin-destroyers up and down the country, of course, hut there is no business of the kind organised to work on a big scale like ours.

“When the war broke out I actually encouraged our own men to go, and I went over to The Ring at Blackfriars and offered £1 apiece to the first 100 men who would volunteer. It wasn’t my fault that in this case only 15 responded. I have done my best to employ discharged soldiers, but, without these last three men to inspect and instruct others, I cannot carry on.” The Southwark Tribunal and the Spring Gardens Appeal Tribunal have decided that Mr Phillips must give up his three men; and the Munitions Labour Court, to which he has also applied, says it is powerless.