The Rat Pit

Soon after the Civil War, reporter Oliver Dyer wrote that if all the bars, houses of prostitution, and gambling dens of New York City ran along one street, it would stretch 30 miles.

Each night on that street he said, there would be a murder every half mile, a robbery every 165 yards, six outcasts at every door, and eight preachers barking the gospel. Reporter Dyer pronounced John Allen the “wickedest” of the city’s wicked.

A minister read the story and entered John Allen’s bar on Water Street to witness to him. To his surprise, Allen, though not converted, was seized by pious pangs and offered to open his saloon to daily prayer meetings. Hundreds flocked there.

Newspapers puffed the story and Allen became a media sensation. He soon announced his bar would become a house of worship, adding that since he was now famous he intended to join the church… someday.

The success of the meetings led organizers to rent the nearby “rat pit” at “Kit Burn’s Saloon;” a makeshift amphitheater with seats rising above a pit in which scores of rats were released. Dogs were turned loose and bets taken on the number of rats the dogs could kill within a certain amount of time.

Burn’s son-in-law often ended the show by jumping into the pit and killing the surviving rats with his teeth! Kit Burns would then clean the blood off the floor, and rent out the pit for the nightly prayer meeting. As soon as the prayer meetings ended each afternoon, rat shows resumed, (to “ratify” the prayers, Burns quipped in a poor pun).

John Allen, basking in publicity, prepared to leave on a lecture tour of New England. He made it to Connecticut before getting so drunk he was dismissed by the public. Interest plunged and within a month Allen took his saloon back.

Christians rented another building down the street and it became the first home of McAuley Water Street Mission. Kit Burn’s “Rat Pit” was eventually transformed into a home for reformed prostitutes, the bar became a chapel, and the “Rat Pit” became a kitchen.

Excerpted from a church bulletin