Boelter, W.R. - The Rat Problem (1909 1st. ed.)

Boelter, W.R. - The Rat Problem

London: John Bale, Sons, 1909, First Edition

Publisher's grey-green cloth with titles and vignette illustrations to boards in black
8vo (6.6” x 8.1” tall
VII,[1],165,[1]pages + 6 pages trade advertisements at rear

GOOD
Corners lightly bumped. binding square although slightly loose. not inscribed.
text and illustrations in excellent unmarked order throughout. a very good copy.

Tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait of Sir James Chrichton-Browne - President of the Incorporated Society for the Destruction of Vermin.
With 75 b/w illustrations from photographs.

The one rat per person rule seems to come from a 1909 book entitled The Rat Problem by W.R. Boelter. In it he conducted a survey where he asked people in the English countryside whether it was reasonable to say that there was one rat per acre of land.
"In the end he made an educated guess," says Sullivan. "There were 40 million cultivated acres of land in England at the time so he concluded there were 40 million rats. It just happened that the population of the UK in 1909 was also about 40 million."

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