5) Rat-Catcher

Rat-catching wasn’t exactly a sought after position, but it was essential. Those dirty little buggers spread diseases and after the horrors of the plague no one wanted to have them around. A lot of people hate rats for obvious reasons – one of which is that they are absolutely gross – but you can’t really be mad at the rat. If humans didn’t leave their dirty crap everywhere then rats wouldn’t want to live around us either.

I don’t envy the rat-catchers job though, getting bitten and catching illnesses was a part of daily life. Some rat-catchers, however, were slightly more insalubrious; after they had been hired by a town to rid them of rats they would start breeding them. This meant that when they came to collect their payment from the town they would get more dosh.