Jack Black (rat catcher)

[3][2] Black bred unusually colored rats and sold them as pets, playing a large role in domesticating the animal.

He had a flamboyant appearance, typically donning a self-made "uniform" of a green topcoat, scarlet waistcoat, and breeches, with a huge leather sash inset with cast-iron rats.

As a young boy, Jack Black grabbed feral rats in Regent’s Park and flung them in wire cages, which impressed passersby.

[3] In addition to rat-killing, Black was involved in fishing, bird catching, taxidermy, and was particularly accomplished in dog breeding.

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.

[5] By 1869, Charles Baudelaire called the rat "the poor child’s toy" in his poetry collection Le Spleen de Paris.

Drawing of Jack Black from a photograph, in Henry Mayhew 's 1851 book London Labour and the London Poor