1905, Ford Madox Ford, The Benefactor, London: Brown, Langham & Co., Part IV, Chapter 3, p. 282,
Years ago he had completed his purchase of the ramshackle and rat-ridden old barrack.
1999, Philip French, “He killed a boy, and the binmen are on strike. Life really stinks...” (review of the film Ratcatcher), The Guardian, 14 November, 1999,
The polluted canal and the foetid, rat-ridden garbage become forceful symbols of a society indifferent to the suffering in its lower depths and the inability of the demoralised to change their condition.