London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you, London Walkers.
Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, January 24th, 2026.
And here it is.
Here’s your daily London fix.
London has always belonged to the rats.
We just rent the place. On short leases. And with very optimistic expectations.
Eight, nine, maybe ten million humans in London today.
And depending on who you believe, at least that many rats. Some estimates double it. Some triple it.
London likes to think it runs the place.
The rats know better.
They were here before us. They flourished because of us. And they will almost certainly outlast us.
London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
And today we’re talking rats.
Which brings us to January 1852.
The winter London suddenly noticed.
But before we get there, let’s do a very London thing and clear our throats.
We need a rat crash course.
A VERY QUICK, VERY LONDON RAT CRASH COURSE
First question people always ask.
How many rats are there in London today?
No one knows. Anyone who claims they do is lying.
But pest controllers work with a rule of thumb.
One rat per person. Minimum.
That puts us comfortably into the millions.
Where are they?
Under pavements.
Behind walls.
In basements.
In parks.
Along the Thames.
Inside the Tube.
Inside the gaps London never quite sealed.
Rats don’t spread evenly. They cluster.
Where food drops.
Where drains leak.
Where waste accumulates.
In other words, where humans live.
Second question. Who controls rats in London?
Officially, the borough councils.
Historically, the City of London Corporation took this extremely seriously. Rat-catching was once a recognised profession. Men were paid per tail. Terriers were bred specifically for the job.
Unofficially?
No one controls rats in London.
You manage them.
You contain them.
You negotiate.
You never win.
Third question. Are rats dangerous?
Yes. And no.
Historically, catastrophically yes. Plague. Typhus. Disease on a civilisational scale.
But rats themselves are cautious animals. Intelligent. Nervous. Risk-averse.
They avoid humans whenever possible.
Unless cornered.
A cornered rat will fight back.
With teeth that can gnaw through wood. Through lead pipes. Through bone.
That image sticks for a reason.
Fourth. The myths.
Rats can swim up toilets. True.
They can climb vertical brickwork. True.
They can survive falls that would kill a cat. True.
They do not hunt people.
They do not seek confrontation.
They want what we want.
Food. Warmth. Shelter. A quiet life.
Which makes them, uncomfortably, very London.
RATS AND OTHER CITIES
Every great city has rats.
Paris. New York. Rome. Rome’s rats look like they’ve been there since the Senate.
But London’s rat problem is different.
Why?
Because London is old. Layered. Burrowed. Built on itself again and again.
The Thames is tidal. Sewers back up. Basements flood. Infrastructure shifts.
Rats love complexity.
London isn’t planned. It has grown.
Which makes it paradise.
Empires come and go. Rats adapt.
And that brings us to history.
RATS IN LONDON HISTORY
Whenever London is under stress, rats appear in the story.
The Black Death.
The aftermath of the Great Fire.
Cholera outbreaks.
Slum clearances.
Rats are the city’s diagnostic tool.
When rats surge, something has gone wrong.
Which brings us, inevitably, to January 1852.
THE WINTER LONDON LOSES ITS NERVE
January 1852. Deep winter. Damp. Cold. Gaslight. Fog.
London is already anxious.
It doesn’t quite know it yet, but it is heading toward a reckoning with its own filth.
And then the reports start.
Holborn. Clerkenwell. The lower reaches of the old Fleet Ditch.
Rats in cellars.
Rats in bakehouses.
Rats pouring out of drains.
Not just one or two.
Numbers.
And boldness.
A butcher shuts early because his cellar is alive with them. A baker barricades his flour store. A publican reports rats running across customers’ boots during opening hours and nobody finishing their pint.
One newspaper reports a woman in a basement kitchen “nearly overcome” by rats moving over her skirts.
That detail matters.
Victorian London was obsessed with order. With respectability. With control.
Rats are disorder made flesh.
And the language escalates.
“Swarms.”
“Plagues.”
“Infestations.”
The implication is unmistakable.
These are not just animals.
They are warnings.
Now here’s the thing.
Rats had always been there. Everyone knew that. London was built on refuse. Fed by waste. Powered by decay.
But this felt different.
This felt like the ground itself was rebelling.
And London starts asking a very London question.
What have we done to deserve this?
FEAR, JOKES, AND A NERVOUS LAUGH
Cartoonists pile in.
Rats in top hats.
Rats marching in formation.
Rats evicting humans from their own homes.
London laughs.
But it’s nervous laughter.
Because beneath the jokes is a dawning realisation.
Waste is not disappearing.
It’s accumulating.
Human waste goes into cesspits. Or drains. Or straight into the river.
People don’t yet understand germ theory. They believe disease travels in smells. In vapours. In bad air.
Rats therefore seem like carriers. Harbingers. Proof that the environment itself has turned hostile.
And reformers smell opportunity.
Men like Edwin Chadwick point to the rats and say: this is what happens when a modern city runs on medieval plumbing.
The rat scare becomes an argument.
In pamphlets. In speeches. In council meetings.
Evidence that the underground world is out of control.
London begins to imagine itself as layered.
A respectable city above.
A monstrous city below.
Cellars. Drains. Sewers. Tunnels.
The Underground isn’t underground to rats. It’s a front door.
The mythology is forming.
There is even talk of organised rat patrols. Men with dogs. Traps. Clubs.
But then something very London happens.
The panic fades.
Winter eases. Newspapers move on. Attention shifts.
The rats don’t disappear.
The fear does.
But the idea remains.
THE WARNING LONDON IGNORES
Six years later, 1858.
The Great Stink.
The Thames becomes unbearable. Parliament flees. Curtains are soaked in disinfectant. Government grinds to a halt.
And suddenly January 1852 looks prophetic.
London had been warned.
It just didn’t listen.
That is the rhythm of this city.
Ignore.
Panic.
Reform.
Repeat.
THE MODERN KICKER
So what about now?
The rats are still here.
Still adapting. Still learning. Still exploiting our blind spots.
Modern London is cleaner. Smarter. Better engineered.
But it is still layered. Still leaky. Still human.
Rats have survived firestorms, plagues, bombs, and bureaucracy.
They have seen empires rise and fall.
And long after we are gone, they will still be nosing around the edges of whatever replaces us.
Which is why the Great Rat Scare of 1852 matters.
It’s not a footnote.
It’s a moment of clarity.
A city glimpsing itself from below.
Realising that civilisation is thinner than it looks.
That control is partial.
That nature is patient.
London has always belonged to the rats.
We’re just the most recent tenants.
And in this city, there’s a saying it never quite says out loud.
A rat a day keeps the nightmares fed.
London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
You’ve been listening to
This… is London, the London Walks podcast.
Emanating from www.walks.com.
Home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £25 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Jack the Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar and the familiar new.
And here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.