The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-01-27
SIX ARE BITTEN BY HUNGRY RATS Drastic Program To Combat Plague Adopted By Manhat-
 tan Health Officials

NEW YORK;. Jan.- 26.-Six persons were bitten by rats in lower Manhattan during the last week. While New York has always been more or less plagued with rats, the health authorities admit the pests have become more menacing. A drastic program to meet the situation has been adopted by the authorities. | When the tenants notify the health department that there are rats about the place, a thorough inspection of the place will be made by the authorities. The owner will then be told to abate the nuisance. If the warning is not obeyed within certain number of days, the owner will be summoned to court and charged with maintaining a nui- sance,
 Officials as yet have not been able to assign cause for the unusual vic iousness of the rats. Two men and a child were bitten in one tenement house on East Fourteenth street. The neigh bors insisted that the invaders were hugh gray animals which had come up from the whafves. On the other hand, a child in an upper room on Eighth street was bitten by brown rat. In one instance a baby's finger was gnawed to the bone before the mother could respond to its cries. Two men sleeping in a room on an upper floor of an east side tenement awOke in the night to find rats biting the lobes of their ears. Six blocks away another child was bitten. The lower east side, which has been rat-infested since the population became dense in that sec tion, is alarmed over the invasion of the man-eaters.
 Sewers Full Of Rodents
 Officials assert that in city the size of New York there is no practical method of exterminating rats. There are millions of them. They live and breed wherever they are unmOlested. The sewers are full of them. The cellars and docks have been inhabited for years. An investigation about Manhattan during the week revealed that they are becom- ing more numerous and daring. It was only in the new apartment houses of modern, sanitary construction that their absence was noted. Elsewhere there are swarms of them.
 There is hardly a store in the down. town section that is not plagued at times with rats. A clerk said he had tried keeping cats, but they were in- timidated by the large rats. In one eel lar it was estimated that 50 rats could be seen in the space of an hour, either entering or leaving the place. There are so many south of the Washington Square section that they have been seen in the streets by the police. A watch man who had been on duty for l4 years said he had never seen so many rats about the streets in daylight.
 Where Rats Get Food
 ''Too many people are eating in their bedrooms nowadays" said rOomlng- house proprietor. "The vast majority of old homes and many of the old stores are now occupied by tenants who live in one or two rooms. They do all their cooking there. They bring in their food from the delicatessens and store it about in old suitcases or wooden boxes, under the beds and in the corners of the hall ways.
 And the food seems to be of the va riety which the rats crave. such as cheese, pastry and breadstuffs. All of our foreign population. eat cheese, They throw the scraps out in the halls, in the backwards and in the streets"
 Meanwhile city officials assert that the rats are not coming ashore from the ships. They point out that the usual precautions such as shields for the cables and lines tying the ships to the docks prevent such foreign inva- sion.
 New York should be cleaned up in the only way possible for it to be cleaned" said one official "The idea of having merely spring houseclean- ing is disgrace. The streets are kept in pretty good condition, but in the eel lars and yards refuse remains all win ter. And practically all rubbish con tains particles of food. I have in- spected hundreds of buildings this win- ter and rarely have I found a rat trap.
 .'Some people take the rats as a mat ter of course. I have heard many stories where children have been bitten.