Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats

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Housefly, Musca domestica. L. O. Howard, The House Fly: Disease Carrier (New York: Frederick Stokes, 1911). Biologist C. F. Hodge promoted domestic-scale, early-season fly trapping, using traps such as these, as the best means of controlling flies because he believed sanitation could never eliminate all fly-breeding. Reference Book for the Lecture “Fight the Fly” (Chicago: International Harvester Company Agricultural Extension Department, 1917). In the 1910s, health departments promoted fixtures and tools with which householders could protect their homes from flies, emphasizing private responsibility for fly-borne diseases. Chicago Board of Health, Clean Living (May 1916). Courtesy of the Chicago Municipal Reference Collection. The headline “Our Greatest Menace Is Domestic not Foreign” played on debates about the United States’s entry into the Great War in Europe but also placed responsibility for fly control with individual families. Here, most of the flies come from trash in the man’s own yard. Chicago Board of Health, Clean Living (July 1916). Courtesy of the Chicago Municipal Reference Collection. Flies became part of the debate about infant-feeding practices in the early 1900s. This cartoon warned mothers that flies connected urban filth with domestic space and infants’ food. Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Flies and Diarrheal Disease (New York: Department of Health, 1914). Health department literature emphasized women’s responsibility for fly control and the potential for flies to contaminate food and drink. “Flies Are a Disgrace,” Bulletin of the North Carolina State Board of Health 21 (May 1914). Tenement families in the Bronx in 1914 dumped garbage in their backyard in the absence of better receptacles. The open windows, strung with clotheslines, would permit flies from the backyard and nearby horse stables to enter domestic spaces. Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Flies and Diarrheal Disease (New York: Department of Health, 1914). Bedbug, Cimex lectularius . Hugo Hartnack, 202 Common Household Pests of North America (Chicago: Hartnack Publishing, 1939). This cartoon illustrated a 1939 advertisement for DuPont’s hydrocyanic acid gas (HCN) generator. Like bedbugs, HCN could penetrate into the narrowest crannies of homes and other structures, making it both highly effective and likely to spread to adjoining structures through unseen crevices. Pests and Their Control, July 1939. Courtesy of the National Pest Management Association. A U.S. Department of Agriculture bulletin shows the proper way to prepare a bedroom for HCN fumigation, to facilitate airing out afterward. Failure to prepare a room thus could result in the retention of gas in porous items—a common cause of HCN poisoning. E. A. Back and R. T. Cotton, “Hydrocyanic Acid Gas as a Fumigant for Destroying Household Insects,” USDA Farmers’ Bulletin 1670 (1932). German cockroach, Blattella germanica, with ootheca, or egg case, which contains up to forty eggs, more than that for larger species of roach. Hugo Hartnack, 202 Common Household Pests of North America (Chicago: Hartnack Publishing, 1939). A German cockroach squeezes into a tight space. The attraction to bodily contact with surfaces is called positive thigmotaxis; this behavior helps the species hide and move throughout buildings. Hugo Hartnack, 202 Common Household Pests of North America (Chicago: Hartnack Publishing, 1939). At this 1946 workshop in Springfield, Illinois, public housing maintenance staff learn to apply residual DDT. Journal of Housing (July 1946). Courtesy of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. Norway rat, Rattus norvegicus. Hugo Hartnack, 202 Common Household Pests of North America (Chicago: Hartnack Publishing, 1939). Baltimore schoolchildren participate in a clean-up day in 1953, part of a long tradition of neighborhood environmental stewardship in the city’s black communities , which included rat and fly control. Citizens’ Planning and Housing Association Collection, Series VIII, Box 1, folder 40-Clean-Up Day, 1953, University of Baltimore Archives. Courtesy of CPHA Collection—University of Baltimore. Gaps in this house foundation in Baltimore allowed for rat ingress. This photograph was part of a 1941 survey of housing conditions that led up to the Baltimore Plan. Citizens’ Planning and Housing Association Collection, Series VIII, Box 1, folder 85-Housing-Interior Shots, 1940s–1950s, University of Baltimore Archives. Courtesy of CPHA Collection—University of Baltimore. Health officials in Baltimore believed that crumbling outhouses like this one harbored rats. This photograph was part of the 1941 survey that informed the Baltimore Plan. Citizens’ Planning and Housing Association Collection, Series VIII, Box 1, folder 84a-Housing-Exterior Shots, University of Baltimore Archives. Courtesy of CPHA Collection—University of Baltimore. ...