RAT BAITING
The prohibition on animal fightings of 1835 didn't include rat baiting or ratting. So ratting increased popularity as a gambling sport and rat pits appeared everywhere. At one time London counted about 70 rat pits.
Wentworth Day, a devotee of the rat baiting game wrote in the 19th century:
"This was a rather dirty, small place, in the middle of the Cambridge Circus, London. You went down a rotten wooden stair and entered a large, underground cellar, which was created by combining the cellars of two houses. The cellar was full of smoke, stench of rats, dogs and dirty