These traps are circular, 22 cms in diameter at the base, with sides sloping gradually towards the center where there is a circular opening 11 cms in diameter and 4.5 cms above the base. The sides are roughened on the outside to give a grip to insects’ feet. The hole at the top is partly covered over with metal vanes which tip over when a cockroach stands on them, and so the insect falls inside the trap. There is a small container for “bait” (a mixture of beer and banana is advised) in the middle, and the insects are supposed to fall into the trap as they try to reach the bait. Once in the trap they cannot climb out. Actually an unbaited trap was found to catch as many cockroaches as a baited, and no bait was used. The traps are not intended for catching bed-bugs, but they do catch them, and any other insects which are running about; beetles, spiders and woodlice have been also captured.

Mellanby, Kenneth. 1940. Rhythmic Activity in Domestic Insects. Acta Medica Scandinavica 103: 89-98. doi:10.1111/j.0954-6820.1940.tb11083.x

This really is impossible, isn’t it? How can such a trap work for bed bugs? What do you think?

Can bed bugs crawl on a concave surface? Let’s say that they can’t (I don’t know, do you?) — why would they drop into the trap in the first place?

I don’t want to get ahead of myself too much but here are some possibilities that occur to me (if you find them wanting, consider the source!):

• Perhaps in a heavy infestation practically anything will catch bed bugs — as long as they can climb it — and will trap them as long as they cannot crawl out
• Perhaps the traps, while not baited for either pest, did in fact attract bed bugs. How could they possibly? By preserving in them the smell of their buddies, their conspecifics?

By now surely you’ve taken a peek at the photo below and my surprise is no more. Let me tell you briefly how difficult it was to find the Demon cockroach trap that Mellanby used in his natural infestation in the rat room, the Demon cockroach trap used in Britain for many decades it seems, a trap that must have been so common, he felt no need to describe it until he presented his paper in another country. Extremely difficult.

Because it wasn’t called a Demon cockroach trap! Mellanby probably couldn’t bring himself to call it by its common name. Maybe because it’s totally wrong and silly.

It was called a Demon beetle trap.

My aim is to not acquire any more pest “interests” in this lifetime but even I know that is just wrong. Designed to mess with us seventy years later?

Beetle as a gentler, inoffensive word for cockroach, I just didn’t know. I would still be a bit unsure that this is in fact a case of euphemism, as opposed to say, a case of a product used for several pests, but there is Mellanby being super clear as always. (And I have since learned that if I listened to Kanye West I would have figured this out much sooner.)

So here is your Demon beetle trap:

Demon cockroach trap

In a nice historical rhyme, the eBay seller of this trap happens to be in a certain town in South Yorkshire.

And here is a really fabulous advertisement page from a G. Harding & Sons catalogue, dated March 6, 1901. The most successful Trap yet introduced.

The third installment of this series is a bit more involved, but I am hoping it will automagically appear on this page sometime this weekend. Until then, very best wishes for the new year. I wish that you will be hopeful about the future, about our bed bug (to use a gentler word) situation.

Related posts:

1. Nocturnal forays, part 1: Mellanby
2. Baited pitfall traps for bed bugs
3. Nocturnal forays, part 3: light, dark, and hunger
4. Detecting bed bugs using bed bug monitors, Rutgers Cooperative Extension
5. Millard’s Intercepting Trench Trap for Bugs

This process is slow and apparently fraught with failure, but what is being learned is there for us to read and understand if only we can get past the language and shorthand that are not meant for us — and in most cases there is in fact no other way to access this information. This is not a simple matter and is, for me at least, a constant struggle.

The goal of today’s exercise is to understand this paper: Romero et al. 2010. Circadian rhythm of spontaneous locomotor activity in the bed bug, Cimex lectularius L. Journal of Insect Physiology doi:10.1016/j.jinsphys.2010.04.025.

But I can’t get there from here, not without a lot of other reading first.

So then, should we begin with the classical study?

Sometime in 1938, Kenneth Mellanby¹ discovered an infestation of bed bugs in rat cages at the University of Sheffield. What the rats were being used for he does not say. The infestation had existed for several years.

He did quite a lot with his good fortune, as we’ll see.

The little field work which has previously been carried out on the bed-bug has consisted of examinations of insects which have been discovered and removed from their hiding places. Useful as such results may sometimes be, they give little information about the normal activities of the insects.

I have been able to trap bed-bugs which have left their hiding places voluntarily during their periods of normal activity. Examinations of these insects tell us a good deal about their habits.

Does he sound pleased with himself or what?

Mellanby, Kenneth. 1939. The Physiology and Activity of the Bed-Bug (Cimex Lectularius L.) in a Natural Infestation. Parasitology 31: 200-211. doi:10.1017/S0031182000012762.

There was a lot going on in this rat room. For one thing, there were cockroaches there which he also took the opportunity to study, but Mellanby believed that they were not interested in the bed bugs (and references another study to that effect).

As one would expect, the rats in this room ate some of the bed bugs!² But not too many of them, or not as many as they would in labs where Mellanby had previously found that “nearly all the bugs are eaten and very few feed and survive.” The difference consisted apparently in the number of rats occupying a cage. When “two rats tended to curl up together and sleep” the bugs were ignored and therefore more successful.

The room was 4 by 3.5 meters and 3.5 meters high. Two meters above the floor there were three windows, but there was no direct sunlight. The rats were in cages on iron racks covering the walls up to the windows. The temperature in the steam-heated room was somewhere between 20-27°C (68-80.6°F).

The floor was of concrete and the walls of smooth plaster, but cracks and particularly the spaces surrounding the pipes in the walls afforded shelter to the insects. Most of the bugs, however, seemed to lurk in the crevices in the metal cages containing the rats, and these animals seemed to form the only food supply for the bugs.

Mellanby collected bed bugs in this room by means of traps placed along the walls and in the middle of the room. I will have a great deal to say about this “Demon” cockroach trap but for now let’s just see what he says of them:

Two kinds of traps have been used, “Demon” cockroach traps and rolls of corrugated paper. In each experiment four “Demon” traps were placed, each one always on the same spot on the floor of the rat room. The bugs in their wanderings climbed up the sides of the traps, fell in and appeared to be unable to climb out again. All stages of nymphs as well as adults were caught by this method. In the second method small rolls of corrugated paper were left on the floor of the room, each roll consisting of a cylinder of paper 10 cm. long and 4 cm. in diameter; the bugs found hiding places in the folds of the paper.

So, yes. What in the world is a Demon cockroach trap and how came it to trap so many bed bugs? I am relieved that after a long, frustrating search I will be able to answer the first part of that question, in good time.

The principal difference in the catches made by the two methods of trapping is that 77.9% of the bugs caught in the “Demon” traps were unfed, whereas only 18.1% of those found in the corrugated paper were unfed. The reason for this is easily seen. Once a bug was inside a “Demon” trap, it was unable to escape, but when a bug crawled inside a roll of corrugated paper it could as easily crawl out again. Hungry bugs seeking food would not remain in the paper, but fed individuals would find a snug hiding place.

This is extremely interesting and here Mellanby makes certain assumptions that we should pay attention to:

It is probable that the “Demon” traps caught such a small proportion of fed bugs because many newly gorged individuals, being less agile after having ingested a considerable weight of blood, tend to remain near the cages in which they have fed. Evidence given later indicates that practically all the unfed bugs captured in the “Demon” traps were hungry individuals which had left their hiding places to seek for food.

I honestly don’t understand the “evidence given later” which seems to hinge on the egg production of females during the first two days after capture (60% of them laid eggs). (My copy of this article is annotated by a previous reader and he or she marked this section just as I would have.)

I’m not sure what to make of this and I wish I could talk to my fellow reader (across how many years?) who also marked the above section with an arrow and, I imagine, understood it perfectly.

This, by the way, is the study that allowed Mellanby to calculate the time between feedings (he painted individual bed bugs and recaptured them, a whole interesting subject in itself), at approximately 6 days. [Update 1/8/11: I made an interesting mistake here (and also here). Or, put another way, recaptures may indeed be fascinating, but this is not really how Mellanby derived his conclusions about the time between feedings. I will correct this as soon as I can.]³ For a modern research update on feeding intervals, see this.

Peak catch

On four nights in May 1938, Demon traps were examined every 3 hours each night. Each removal took less than 5 minutes and the light was not turned on. Still, Mellanby reports that during the day the bugs’ behavior was inhibited by workers entering the rat room, but that this did not seem to happen at night, as long as a light was not turned on, based on the numbers of bed bugs caught on nights when no one entered the room.

The maximum catch was obtained at the same time each night. Each point in the graph indicates the number of bugs collected during a period of 3 hr., and the times marked on the abscissa indicate the middle of each period. Thus 0130 represents the collection made between midnight and 3 a.m. It appears that the bugs were most active after 3 a.m. During most of this period the room was not dark, for the sun rose shortly after 4 a.m.

Activity of bed bugs in rat room. May 1938. K. Mellanby (1939) The Physiology and Activity of the Bed-Bug ( Cimex Lectularius L.) in a Natural Infestation.

This means that most bed bugs were caught in Mellanby’s traps sometime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. — with the sun rising after 4 (GMT+1, British Summer Time).

Hmmm!

Daytime activity and artificial light

Though in May the bugs were mostly active at, and after, dawn, the presence of a 60 W. electric lamp left burning all night affected the catch considerably. At this time of year the electric light would give greater illumination than daylight in the animal room until about 5:30 a.m., after which daylight would be the brighter.

On two nights when the lamp was left burning, the trap catch was greatly reduced to 24 bed bugs from a high of 65 when no light was left on.

Bed bugs were routinely caught during the day as well as night.

Several catches were made between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.; on several weekdays no bugs or only one were caught, but on Sundays when the room was not entered all day as many as nineteen bugs were caught. This was during the part of May 1938 when the average nightly catch was sixty-five.

Complete darkness

On one occasion the animal room was kept in complete darkness for a period of 45 hr., from midday on Saturday until Monday morning. The traps were examined throughout the whole period at 3-hourly intervals. The darkness during the day did not in any way upset the rhythm of the bug’s activity, for catches made during the day and night were indistinguishable from those made under natural conditions of daylight and darkness.

___________________________________

1. Mellanby is an interesting figure and you can get an idea of the breadth and impact of his work in this obituary.
2. Are humans the only chumps who do not go in for Eat or Be Eaten when it comes to bed bugs? I know, but medicinal uses are not quite the same thing! We’re clearly talking bloody, real-time combat here.
3. In this article he also delves into his findings of the effect of movement on starved bed bugs (they lose weight at a significantly faster rate after 5 minutes of activity). Previously mentioned here. More Mellanby here (though not a particularly pleasant subject, if you take that as warning).

Related posts:

1. Nocturnal forays, part 2: on Demon traps
2. Nocturnal forays, part 3: light, dark, and hunger
3. Johnson’s hut, part 1.5
4. Baited pitfall traps for bed bugs
5. Caught in a situation trap

The following two letters are from his papers at the National Library of Medicine.

An excerpt of the first letter, to his wife, October 1, 1924:

Your letter has not increased my love for New York. If I had picked out the flat I would not dare to come home. As it is I feel more and more like buying a steamer ticket and deferring the agony of finding a home and cleaning it up, and then wasting one third of one’s usable daytime in trains or underground tunnels.

Dr. Smillie lived near Princeton when he was stationed in New York. He liked it there.

[...]

I have no more faith in short-cut methods of removing bed-bugs than you have. There ought to be bed-bug specialists in New York to fumigate flats that are infested. It ought not to take much sulphur in such small closed spaces to make the bed-bugs cough themselves to death. But what would the family do in the meanwhile? Anyway, you have the piano and victrola and “Old Black Joe” to gladden the occasion, and there will be enough people in each bed to keep them all warm this winter. And it will take only three quarters of an hour to go to the office through the mole burrow,

[...]

Answer me one question. Why do things cost about twice as much in New York as here? Enclosed are three vaccination certificates. If they will not do I will try again after getting home. Even a flat with B.B’s is HOME if you are there, Old Sweetheart.

[...]

You and Freda will have to trip around a bit while the rest of us take care of the flat. I can still boil eggs, and fry French toast; and you will need a vacation from the flat.

We are having a northerly wind and cold weather. It must be quite chilly in N.Y., but then these flats are said to be always overheated!

Did you know that the black belt of Alabama was named after the color of the soil? We crossed it this afternoon. Also did you know that your new Howe sewing machine was named after the American inventor of the sewing machine, Elias Howe?

Good night, Sweetest,

Wilbur

P.S. Did you know that “Sugar” was outrivaling “Honey” as a term of endearment. It may be “Sacharin” next. W.

And this is his letter to his daughter, Peggy, about the same date:

Dear Peggy,

It is chilly to-night even in southern Alabama, and I have lit the fire in my room. The pine wood here is full of pitch and hardly needs any paper to light it. In the woods men cut the sides of the trees and let the pitch run out, just as they get rubber in Ceylon. Then they put the pitch in a still and the turpentine comes off first leaving the resin behind. The turpentine is used by painters and the resin by violinists and acrobats and such. That’s why acrobats don’t have to spit on their hands any more.

It’s too bad that mother has had to work so hard cleaning the flat. No wonder she has been too busy to write. I can just see her chasing those B B’s with a hammer and smashing right and left.

It must have cheered her up immensely to hear you and the victrola singing “Old Black Joe” and appropriate hunting songs.

Thank Billy for the beautiful picture he drew. I should have recognized it even if it hadn’t been labeled.

It was nice of you to write such a good letter full of news and to let me know that my nice family had reached New York and was well. I shall soon be home to hear all about everything.

With love to you all,

Papa

I’m not sure why I’m showing you this. Aside from these being wonderful letters, I find reading about other people’s bed bug troubles through the years comforting. It makes it seem like there will be an end to all of this, one day.

Of course, one of the unfortunate consequences of being so aware of bed bugs is the unbidden bed bug thoughts that occur when looking at photographs, art, reading books, anything and everything where one imagines the bed bugs have been elided:

Court of first model tenement house in New York 72nd Street - NYPL Digital ID: 482804 - Berenice Abbott, 1936

Talman Street, no. 57, Brooklyn - NYPL Digital ID: 482809 - Berenice Abbott, 1936

Related posts:

1. Serious social stigma (c. 1980)
2. The poet and the bed bugs
3. Girault and the bed bugs
4. An interview with Steven W. Smollens: law and history in NYC
5. 1960, New Jersey, #4

As in the following:

National Pest Control Association Technical Release - Bedbugs - May 2, 1974

That is a very specific list: “homes, apartments, restaurants, theaters, buses, and offices.”

And this is the 1977 update:

National Pest Control Association Technical Release - Bedbugs - September 6, 1977

Setting aside the obvious possibility of decline, it is striking to see this shift from practical knowledge about where bed bugs are found to a rather useless reference to “delicate situations” — for this anxiety about embarrassing customers by telling them they have bed bugs made explicit, see this. (Is it not useless?)

I prefer the 1974 version. More:

Bedbugs normally feed only at night, most often just before dawn. They will feed during the day in theaters, buses, and offices if food is not available at night. They hide in cracks and crevices during the day.

(Hold that “just before dawn” thought, as there is some recent research that’s worth reviewing, next.)

And a simple statement:

The bedbug, Cimex lectularius, is found throughout the United States.

My all time favorite bed bug fact sheet from this period, however, is the USDA’s Leaflet No. 453 (1972), simply because it played a starring role in some minor political theater in the early 1980s, deliberately ridiculed by Reagan’s administration. One can mourn it even now because it too was savvy about what the bed bug is capable of, specifically its dispersal in apartments and hotels, the kind of thing that it would have been very good for many professionals and the public to know virtually at any point during this decade.

Finally, just for the sake of hope, it seems reasonable to expect that when we actually see a decline of bed bugs appearing in public places (someday it will happen!?), we’ll know we’re on a good track.

Related posts:

1. 1960, New Jersey, #4
2. The extravagant optimism of the DDT era
3. “They are also able to withstand chilling, thawing, rechilling and again thawing”
4. Even a flat with B.B’s is HOME if you are there, Old Sweetheart.
5. New York vs Bed Bugs (1944)

Guaranteed, or your money back.

Bug Fatalities!

What did I say? 100% joy.

When people go on about “what makes this country great” this is what they mean, surely?

This cartoon short is from film archivist Skip Elsheimer’s collection of treats, available at A/V Geeks¹ and archive.org.

When Doomsday for Pests has been shown on the arthouse circuit it has been referred to as a 1952 production. Too late, I think. Pestroy DDT is a product from 1946. The Wisconsin Historical Society has a great photograph of a Sherwin-Williams Pestroy DDT window display dated August 1946. See also this filmography of animation studio UPA.

The film was produced by Jerry Fairbanks for the Sherwin-Williams company, along with another short called Good-Bye Weeds. ² There are references to a press screening on September 12, 1946. So, 1946!

A lot of DDT, not just a little

One way that people watched this film is right at the store.

Look at this detail of an ad from Gimbels department store in Milwaukee from July 1947:

A quart of the DDT paint-like liquid coating cost $1.19 in 1947 (about $11.40 in 2009 dollars). A 3-ounce can of the DDT powder was 39 cents ($3.75).

Every hour on the hour!

I confess I find this film inspiring. Imagine if something like this were done for DE? Or any other bed bug subject?

1. Disclosure: I realized after finding this film that I work for a company that does business with A/V Geeks.
2. See more Jerry Fairbanks industrial films here.

Related posts:

1. The vermin in the walls is wicked
2. The poet and the bed bugs
3. DDT resistance in Belo Horizonte, 1985-1986
4. Anti-bug conscience
5. The challenges in 1941

I have (in my History of the Misery of Bed Bugs collection) a set of notes, passed along like contraband, of his New York County Lawyers’ Association Jack Newton Lerner Lecture on bed bugs, Bed Bugs, Constructive Eviction, Warranty of Habitability: Comments and Cases — an outline of the wonderful story of early bed bug litigation in the city.

When May Berenbaum’s recent NYT op-ed offered (as evidence for the changing fortunes of the persecuted bed bug?) a memorable phrase from an early 20th century New York decision — “[Bedbugs] can be dealt with by the tenant by processes known to all housewives” — I bethought myself my Smollens lecture notes…

Mr. Smollens indulged my questions.

New York vs Bed Bugs: Why look at early 20th century case law in the first place? Are bed bugs and the law like bed bugs and science, where we’re missing quite a big chunk of development and thought?

Steven W. Smollens: That is a potent observation. Science left the bedbug alone for a long time. With the bedbug gone, and modern insecticides left to cope with less offensive insects, when the bedbug came back, there were initially few treatments considered legal and lethal. While our coping skills were not honed to the bedbug spread, our own modern life helped the bedbug move in to one home and business after another.

When the bedbug problem was novel, we did not pay much attention. We missed out on chances to change certain patterns, to make the risks less, and to stem the spread. We passed up early warning, education, and training for exterminators, public officials, tenants, landlords, shopkeepers, travelers, public transportation operators, used furniture and mattress sellers, flea market vendors, college dormitory authorities and the like. The public’s lack of alertness and government’s slow pace, along with housing maintenance codes ill-suited for the new pestilence, has made for a variety of claims for successful pest eradication; but often failure to control is easily passed on to the tenant, or a neighbor or the building manager or landlord and it is hard to support one method of bedbug elimination over any other.

It comes down to “now we know it.” For nearly eighty years, there was not a new bedbug case decided in New York courts involving landlord and tenant. Today’s New York court case will typically involve the application of our Warranty of Habitability statute. But by the first time a warranty of habitability and bedbug case came into the court’s domain for decision, we had missed the chance to an early end to the bedbug’s spread. Today, we can learn a lot from how bedbugs influenced our older landlord and tenant law. We should be able to see ourselves in the tenants who lived in our city one hundred years ago, and realize that by the time bedbugs made it to court at that time, bedbugs were all around.

Early on city life was treated similarly to living in the country. Judges were bound by the state of the law and judges applied the law as it existed to the new circumstances. At the start the law was applied without taking into account the difference in the setting. The loss of control a tenant had over the home in an apartment living in a city is not found when living in a house in the fields. The law gyrated in examining deprivations in habitability and gradually left behind the common law basis of our landlord and tenant law, that the tenant was the equal of a buyer in a market place and thus “let the buyer beware” slowly exited.

The difficulty faced by our earlier city dwellers when confronted by bedbugs was accepted at first as a problem that could be easily handled. That approach took time to change. The law itself developed to recognize that tenants could face problems in their homes, not anticipated by the tenant and the landlord, and not solvable, that would justify breaking of the lease by the tenant and the nonpayment of a portion of the agreed rent.

Today, we have bedbugs in an environment where our city dweller has little or no practical experience in fixing anything at all, let alone a mature insect infestation. Yet, as a community, we have as ancient an approach as we did long ago, when almost every tenant was assumed to have skills to cope with this problem.

Today while the notion is that the landlord must eradicate the bedbugs, in the absence of science, landlords and exterminators, and city agencies, all place an immense pressure upon the tenant to make the home ready for the techniques used by the pest control experts. Unlike any other condition in one’s home, other than perhaps a fire or a flash flood, bedbugs force the tenant into a virtual move-out while still maintaining the apartment as a home. No other home repair requires the tenant to pack all personal belongings, clothing, papers, books, and remove furniture or carpets, and take down pictures, and launder in hot water and then store all garments, or to dry-clean and store away from the home, and to encapsulate mattresses and box springs, just for a start, before extermination can begin. The old days of do-it-self with ant or roach spray do not apply against the bedbug. We are truly not prepared for the dislocation that a bedbug can present.

The harshest reality for our tenants and landlords today is that there is no guarantee that extermination will do the job. Tenants must put their home on hold while waiting out a bedbug life cycle to learn if the insect and its progeny are gone from the home. And because the bedbug is very good at lying dormant, each tenant pins the hope for insect-free living on the skill of the exterminator, the willingness of the landlord to see the eradication through and the cooperation of neighbors. As we are now all too aware, that will not prevent a hitchhiking bedbug to come back again to your home or to a neighbor’s. Living in an apartment in a near-permanent state of packed-up is disheartening.

Constructive Eviction

I looked upon the case law developed in the NY Courts late in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century, as a means to discover how judges grappled with the responsibility of a landlord to the tenant, for habitable housing, in an age where the common law rule was best expressed as “The tenant hires at his peril and a rule similar to caveat emptor applies and throws on the lessee the responsibility of examining as to the existence of defects in the premises and of providing against their ill effects…” (Benjamin Franklin v. Mary Brown, 118 N.Y. 110, 23 N.E. 124, Court of Appeals, 1889).

The early cases evolved from the creation of a new legal doctrine, called “constructive eviction.” The law that an “eviction,” whether total or partial, created a full defense against the landlord suing for remaining unpaid rent expanded to making the “constructive eviction” of the tenant a total defense against a landlord’s post-tenancy rent claim.

Previous, but for a breach of lease by the landlord or an actual or partial eviction from the property, tenants had few merit defenses, such as the rent sued for was in fact paid, and so-called “technical defenses.” Those technical defenses, dealing with the rent demand and the service of process, and notice of commencement of the case were similar to the defenses currently utilized by tenants in modern courts. Eerily, the ancient technical cases, read as though written in the modern era, because the so-called “technical defenses” are as real today as when first applied to the modern standard lawsuit for an eviction, the “summary proceeding.”

The early-era version of the summary proceeding (very similar to the modern form) for litigating an eviction cause for a landlord was invented in the early part of the 19th century as a “swift and expeditious remedy” to recover real property to provide a landlord a new method to evict a tenant, instead of the common law ejectment action.

New York State’s land owners convinced the New York legislature to create this new cause of action, in derogation of common law, to replace the common law ejectment action, because in common law the tenant was entitled to a jury trial and the “peers” often had more in common with the tenant-farmer than the wealthy land baron.

By itself, as a doctrine, “constructive eviction” grew from the body of early cases that recognized that an eviction of the tenant, by the landlord without court process, ended the tenant’s obligation to pay the rent that the tenant agreed to pay when the lease was made.

Courts then grappled with parsing the nature of the “eviction” itself, moving from the obvious outright physical ouster from the property [an “actual eviction”], to evictions that were “partial”, that means from a part of the rented or leased property [an “actual partial eviction” or a “partial eviction”] to actions more sublime, such as the landlord perpetrating a nuisance condition, by either directly causing the condition, or by not correcting the condition when informed.

A key element to the proof of a “constructive eviction” was that the condition that forced the tenant to abandon was not known or discoverable when the lease was made, could not when discovered be corrected by the tenant or by the landlord and, that also rendered the leased property unfit for the use actually contemplated by the lease. [Vermin or noxious smells in or about the house did not constitute eviction so as to justify abandonment of the premises by the tenant (Truesdell v. Booth, 4 Hun 100.) A bad smell in the pantry, and the kitchen being too hot with the stove in it, and bad smells from the front window, along with a stagnant pond of water near the place, bad smell from fish, and vermin in the bedrooms, were all matters that might have given some trouble to eradicate, yet none of them could be held sufficient to relieve the tenant from his liability, or to come within the rule that defines an eviction (Vanderbilt v. Persse, 3 E.D. Smith 428.)]

Courts looking to limit the doctrine of “constructive eviction” pointed to the written agreement made by the tenant and the landlord (the lease). “…The apartment in suit was not under the control of the plaintiff, and no evidence was given of any express covenant in the lease to keep the apartment free from vermin; and, in the absence of such a covenant, the lessee, under the circumstances detailed above and in the absence of fraud, deceit or wrong-doing on the part of the plaintiff, ran the risk of the condition of the property in that regard…” Franklin v. Brown, 118 N.Y. 110; Sherman v. Ludin, 79 A.D. 37.

In the newly discovered potential that an eviction could exist without a full or part physical ouster, the New York legislature sought to identify conditions that could exist and present a defense to a tenant, who quit the leased property, although owing a remainder portion of rent as agreed to in the lease.

“…Pomeroy v. Tyler, 9 N.Y. St. Rep. 514, was also a case very similar in its facts to the present one; and it was held, McAdam, Ch. J., writing the opinion, that the fact that the rooms occupied by the tenant were overrun with vermin, namely, bedbugs, cockroaches, croton-bugs and red ants, making it inconvenient to inhabit the premises and rendering them untenantable, did not constitute a constructive eviction of the tenant…

“…The following remarks of Chief Justice McAdam, in the course of such opinion, are especially applicable to the present case: ‘The legislature has passed a statute relieving tenants from their common law obligations, where the demised premises have been destroyed by fire, tempest or other sudden and unexpected event (Laws 1860, chap. 345; Suydam v. Jackson, 54 N.Y. 450), but the legislative sense of relief to tenants has not as yet reached the case of rats, mice, bugs, roaches or other vermin, and all questions as to them must be decided according to the wisdom of the common law. The inconvenience is one to which all more or less are subject at times; but which, with ordinary skill and attention, may be abated by the tenant.’“ Excerpt from Jacobs v. Morand, 59 Misc. 200, 59 Misc. 200, 110 N.Y.S. 208, 1908, (Supreme Court Of New York, Appellate Term.)

Even then, “constructive eviction” was a defense only if the courts recognized the condition that drove the tenant out of the home, as one so noxious and unsolvable, that the tenant’s swift departure evidenced the severity of the condition and the reasonableness of the departure.

“…Leases would not be worth the paper upon which they are written, if the engagements of parties could be set at naught upon such slight and trivial pretexts. To constitute a constructive eviction, there must be an intentional and injurious interference by the landlord, which deprives a tenant of the beneficial enjoyment of the demised premises, or materially impairs such beneficial enjoyment. An eviction depends upon the materiality of the deprivation. If trifling, and producing no substantial discomfort or serious inconvenience, it will be disregarded, and will not afford cause for the termination of the relation of landlord and tenant…” Excerpt from Seaboard Realty Co. v. Fuller, 33 Misc. 109, 67 N.Y.S. 146; (1900, Supreme Court Of New York, Appellate Term)

When judges first expanded the notion of constructive eviction to rental premises abandoned by the tenant due to uninhabitable conditions, the cases set the way for the eventual notion of a warranty that residential premises would be fit for human use. Many other jurisdictions adopted the warranty of habitability before New York. However, the judicial seeds for the New York warranty were set in the early 20th century bedbug cases.

New York vs Bed Bugs: Tell us about these cases. The 1908 decision is the case that would later be characterized as the “processes known to all housewives” case but it actually does not contain the phrase. That coinage belongs to another judge in 1913 who wasn’t actually deciding a bed bug case at all, if I understand correctly, but in trying to make an important distinction (one that I think prefigures the challenges of modern building-wide bed bug infestations where a single tenant acting alone does not really stand a chance) would open the door for yet another bed bug case…

Steven W. Smollens: The 1908 case is Jacobs v. Morand, and the court there relied upon another court’s decision, made in the case of Pomeroy v. Tyler, 9 N.Y. St. Rep. 514, where the quote goes as follows: “…the case of rats, mice, bugs, roaches or other vermin, and all questions as to them must be decided according to the wisdom of the common law. The inconvenience is one to which all more or less are subject at times; but which, with ordinary skill and attention, may be abated by the tenant…”

In 1913, in Barnard Realty Co. v. Bonwit, that became: “…The rule in Jacobs v. Morand (supra) in regard to bugs and ants within the apartment, which can be dealt with by the tenant by processes known to all housewives, should not be extended to cover offensive and unbearable nuisances outside of the apartment…”

Sometimes, the concept that the courts held to, that is, if a condition were bad but fixable, so that any ordinary person could find a way to deal with it, governed the language in place of the actual text. The “processes known to all housewives” was the sound bite that drove home the notion that courts were not going to protect rent-evading tenants, who after departing the home, were sued for the remainder of the rent, and then backwards, try to construct the “constructive eviction.” Judges knew, that if there were a tried and proven remedy, the abandonment by the tenant could not be defended.

The context for the “housewives” comes from Barnard v. Bonwit, the 1913 case:

“…This is an action to recover rent of an apartment. The defense was constructive eviction. The jury found for the defendant. The verdict having been set aside solely as contrary to law, the facts found are established. Defendant and his wife moved into an apartment on the top floor of a new apartment house on the 15th of September, 1910, and moved out on the 8th of November, 1910. The reason therefor was the disturbance caused by the nightly meetings and performances of rats in the walls and ceilings, coupled with a most offensive odor which increased until the place became untenantable.

There are two Appellate Term decisions, one (Jacobs v. Morand, 59 Misc. Rep. 200), in which the presence of bedbugs, croton bugs, red ants, etc., was held not to be sufficient to establish a constructive eviction; and the other (Madden v. Bullock, 115 N. Y. Supp. 723), which held that the loathsome stench of dead and decayed rats was sufficient.

Very large numbers of people live in tenement houses, apartment houses and apartment hotels in this city. Such tenants have, and can have, control only of the inside of their own limited demised premises. Conditions unknown to the ancient common law are thus created. This requires elasticity in the application of the principles thereof. An intolerable condition which the tenant neither causes nor can remedy seems to me warrants the application of the doctrine of constructive eviction. The rule in Jacobs v. Morand (supra) in regard to bugs and ants within the apartment, which can be dealt with by the tenant by processes known to all housewives, should not be extended to cover offensive and unbearable nuisances outside of the apartment. This tenant could not pull down the walls or the ceilings. He and his family ought not to be compelled to pay rent for an apartment in which they could not live.

This court has held that when the landlord had the entire control of the heating plant a failure to provide sufficient steam heat was enough to constitute constructive eviction. (Berlinger v. Macdonald, 149 App. Div. 5.) Of course that case is different from the one at bar because there it was within the power of the landlord to furnish the heat, and if he did not it was an act of omission upon his part. But here the jury have found the existence of an intolerable condition. The tenant did not cause it and could not remedy it. If any one could it was the landlord. He attempted to and failed. We think the flat dweller was justified in his abandonment of the premises. [Excerpt is from Barnard Realty Co. v. Bonwit, 155 A.D. 182, 184 (N.Y. App. Div. 1913)]

The first modern bed bug case, Streep v Simpson

1913 also brought the first modern bedbug case where the court’s analysis made the bedbug infestation the proper basis for finding a constructive eviction. It is worth noting, how present-day sounding the plight of the tenant was nearly one-hundred years ago:

Defendant, a tenant from year to year, was sued for the last month’s rent of a two-years’ occupancy of a flat in plaintiff’s apartment house which he abandoned just prior to the commencement of the last month in question. He sought to justify this abandonment upon the ground that he was constructively evicted owing to the presence of bedbugs in the house. The size of the apartment house does not appear save that there were two flats on a floor, the one occupied by the defendant being on the fourth floor. The defendant, with his family, had occupied this flat for eighteen months without observing the presence of the bugs. From that time on bedbugs were found in his flat, in the private hall thereof, in the parlor, dining-room, and bath-room, on the walls, in the closets, upon the clothing and in the beds to such an increasing and persistent extent as to cause the greatest discomfort and distress to the dwellers therein…

Shortly after having first observed them the defendant notified the landlord, and it appeared upon investigation that the bugs came from the flat underneath defendant’s. That flat was then occupied, but soon after became vacant, and the landlord employed an “exterminator,” who endeavored to drive the bugs both from the defendant’s flat and the one underneath, but without success; and despite the persistent efforts of this trained “exterminator,” coupled with those of the landlord, as well as the defendant and his wife and painters and decorators, the bedbugs continued to increase, befouling the walls, emitting odors and biting the occupants, and exhibiting in their migrations a tendency to abide in the defendant’s flat, probably because there were persons dwelling there. Such, in brief, is the proof, and so it may be said that the defendant’s flat was infested with bedbugs without his fault; and, as the court below has found a constructive eviction, can it be assumed on appeal that the premises were rendered untenantable and that the landlord must bear the loss of the rent?…

Observing the limitations placed by the Appellate Division upon the case of Jacobs v. Morand, as to bugs within the apartment which can be dealt with by the tenant himself, and applying the language of Mr. Justice Clarke, who wrote for the court in Barnard Realty Co. v. Bonwit, we have reached the conclusion that, under the circumstances shown, it could be found, as a fact, that the defendant was constructively evicted and that his abandonment of his tenancy was justifiable.

The proof here shows such a condition as amounted to an insufferable nuisance, and where its existence in an apartment house is in nowise attributable to the fault of the tenant, but arises and is due to conditions in another part of the same building into which the landlord may go and apply a remedy, if remediable, the tenant must be deemed to have been precluded from a beneficial enjoyment of the premises and his abandonment thereof bars the lessor’s action for the recovery of rent. Considering the landlord’s control over the vacant flat underneath for a period of about two months, and the defendant’s eagerness to afford him every opportunity and aid to rid the latter’s flat of the bugs, their presence cannot be said, as a matter of law, not to be due in some measure to the landlord’s fault, or, at least, to his inability to continue the habitableness of the defendant’s dwelling place. An eviction depends upon the materiality of the deprivation. If trifling, and producing no substantial discomfort or serious inconvenience, it will be disregarded and will not afford cause for the termination of the relation of landlord and tenant.” Seaboard Realty Co. v. Fuller, 33 Misc. Rep. 110.

Here the deprivation was most material. It was by no means trifling, and not only did it produce substantial discomfort and severe inconvenience but it amounted to an intolerable state. Whether or not the deprivation is material is a question of fact, and that having been found below in favor of the defendant the judgment should be affirmed, with costs. [The excerpt is from Streep v. Simpson, 80 Misc. 666, 666-669 (N.Y. Misc. 1913)]

The warranty of habitability

New York vs Bed Bugs: So, from an inconvenience to which all more or less are subject at times and processes known to all housewives, to an intolerable condition that the tenant did not cause and cannot remedy on his own. From caveat emptor to an incipient implied warranty of habitability — would that be an accurate way to put it? (But I thought the warranty of habitability was common law, so why did it take so long for it to be re-claimed?)

Steven W. Smollens: Well in fact, the warranty of habitability did not derive from our common law. Our law before we made statutes to define our law, was made in courts, by judges and lawyers and plain folks, taking their disputes to trial and then on to appeal.

Sometimes, those disputes involving claims for monetary damages were for less than $200 and were not finally determined until the battling opponents had made their way from a trial court to the Appellate Division. Along the way the law of Constructive Eviction was helped along by bedbugs and the dueling over which party, landlord or former tenant, was entitled to the rent.

Codified in Real Property Law § 235-b, as amended, the warranty of habitability had its genesis in the trial courts, where judges faced routinely the problems of urban tenants, whose landlords demanded payment of their rent, while not providing to their tenants the benefits they had “bargained” for in their rental agreement. New York law, slowly evolving from its agrarian roots, had not recognized the relationship between the tenant’s obligation to pay rent, and the landlord’s obligation to provide rental premises fit for human habitation.

Absent a fraud, there was “no law against letting a tumble-down house.” As long as there existed an abundance of rental housing, tenants were able to move away from their problems and take the risks inherent in establishing a constructive eviction.

Common sense concepts, involved in routine everyday life, such as grocery shopping (you would not expect to be required to pay for a full loaf of bread if the grocer were to sell only half a loaf) had no place in the relationship of landlord and tenant. As a lease had been found to be a conveyance of real property, the duty imposed by law upon the landlord was satisfied by the delivery of possession to the tenant.

Only the covenant of continued quiet enjoyment of the premises was impliedly warranted by the “conveyance” to the tenant by the landlord. As long as the tenant had the quiet (undisturbed) right to possession of the premises, the tenant remained duty bound to pay the rent, regardless of the conditions in the premises.

These concepts, existing at common law, of no duty to provide services by the landlord, led to landlords not providing maintenance or essential services, especially in areas tenanted by persons of low-income.

The law did not provide the tenant with the tools necessary to compel the landlord to provide essential services or make necessary repairs. Courts outside New York were the first to determine that a lease for residential property impliedly contained a warranty that the premises were habitable.

A lease was slowly seen as more a purchase of shelter than a transfer of real property, and so an implied fitness for the use intended (U.C.C. Sales) was seen as a more realistic approach to determine the obligations of landlords and tenants.

Our state moved into the modern era in 1975, well past the rest of the United States. At that time, an appeals court, the Appellate Division, Second Department declared: “…we relegate to the limbo of history the orthodox view of caveat lessee and hold that, unless expressly excepted, there is an implied warranty of habitability when a landlord leases premises for residential use…” [Excerpt from Tonetti v. Penati, 48 A.D.2d 25, 367 N.Y.S.2d 804 (A.D. Second Dept., 1975)]. That court cited with approval the similar warranty of habitability decisions made in jurisdictions outside New York, e.g., Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Iowa, New Jersey, California and New Hampshire.

The New York State legislature, quickly grabbed the warranty of habitability from the judges, and went further to provide that the warranty is implied in every lease for residential property and could not be excluded from a lease by a contrary express lease provision.

“Too many people remain unaware how many bedbugs can hide out in an ordinary picture frame”

New York vs Bed Bugs: Care to consider what might come next? What refinements do you think are necessary in order to comprehend the magnitude of the current situation? We see landlords and tenants struggling to get relief from each other and just chaos all around. Is the law adequate to the challenges faced by landlords and tenants with this pest? What do you see in your own practice? Or, put another way, what holes do you see legislators might try to fill?

Steven W. Smollens: Right now, as summer draws to a close, we are seeing more media attention, television and radio advertising, and other expressions to make the bedbug infestation more obvious and open. There are billboards along the road, and bedbug sniffing dogs appearing on morning news programs and newspaper articles to work on getting the message out. I have not seen a public service advertisement, or heard one on radio, and if I have missed any, then there are not enough. In a city where in any campaign season we are inundated with political literature, that form of attention grabbing saturation may help spread information and recognition of the growing potential of the bedbugs invasion.

Pest Control persons are candid that there is no one sure-fire method for success in any given bedbug problem, and many residents are not able to face-down the direction to empty all closets, clean and bag all clothing, pack and seal up everything else, and are likely to fail the test for preparation. When tenants are informed that the bugs can hide inside radios, computers and other electronic devices, can scurry off to hide in cracks and crevices in walls and floors, and hide out in electric outlets, the expectation of failure is very high, that the tenant will not be able to get the apartment ready for the exterminator.

There will be need for new technology. The insects life cycle has to be interrupted. Used furniture and mattresses have to be located to a place without people. The habits of urban scavengers in rescuing other persons’ discarded sofas and chairs has to stop. Too many people remain unaware how many bedbugs can hide out in an ordinary picture frame.

There is a positive role for government at least in so far as sponsoring and producing Public Service Ads and other hand out literature. This does not mean that the law is not in need for some updating, but the law here should add to the potential of success and not look to punish for failure. There is a public interest in making sure that places where people congregate, shop, ride, teach and learn, are encouraged to be on constant vigilance mode. There is no simple problem as “just one bedbug.”

Property managers and tenants should know it is as dangerous to drag an unenclosed mattress through a building’s public areas, as it would be if the mattress were smoldering. An insect will easily drop off an infested mattress in the building hallway and could easily escape to another apartment. Furniture discards should be arranged in advance. Furniture as well as mattresses should be well-wrapped before disposal.

All that requires more widespread and consistent information. Government should be able to handle that. Community groups and tenant associations should be able to distribute literature and post flyers to spread awareness.

New York City has a statute relating to the mandatory eradication of pests insects and rodents. It would seem from a straightforward reading of the statute that there is a shared primary burden on the tenant and the landlord to assure the mandatory eradication of these pests. In some way we may still be of the mindset that every one of us knows the proper way to rid their home of those unwanted annoyances. However the literature associated with pest control suggests that amateurs should not deal with the problem. On the flip side, it should be clear that the landlord has the primary burden for eradication of pests where the problem is beyond any one “dwelling.”

Occupant in control

New York vs Bed Bugs: Finally, what is this business of “occupant in control”!? Please help us out with this. The New York City Housing Maintenance Code, is it a relic from just this era we’ve been discussing? What does this confounding phrase mean?

Steven W. Smollens: I have to agree that there is no sound reason for continuation of arcane language, especially when we need certainty as to who is in charge of pest control and maintenance of the structure. In a positive light, the “occupant in control” should be the same as “owner” and that may bring the attention of the Office of Code Enforcement upon the owner’s registered managing agent, the building’s superintendent, a net lessee of the building owner, a subtenant of a net lessee in control of the entire property. Perhaps it is a way to make more persons and entities associated with “owner” as responsible as the “owner” for keeping “…the premises free from rodents, and from infestations of insects and other pests, and from any condition conducive to rodent or insect and other pest life…”

That expansion to other responsible persons or entities is a means to gain a useful court or agency mandate against a real person or the person or entity actually in charge. I do not see that the term encompasses “tenant.” The Housing Maintenance Code is able to use the word or term “tenant” when it means tenant. So the absence of the word “tenant” from this section implies persons or entities as like the “owner” in control.

Related posts:

1. Bed bugs and the law in New York City
2. Reenactment of Article 151 of the NYC Health Code was adopted
3. Housing Court Judge Sheldon Halprin visits a Harlem building and changes begin
4. The New Jersey Assembly bed bug bill
5. An interview with urban pest management expert Clive Boase

The papers say the city is ready to do battle, more on what that might mean later.

Of course bed bugs have always been a big deal. Eradicating them, a big production. We had a brief respite there in the 20th century with a succession of various effective and cheap (and therefore widely deployable) control methods. Now we get to spend incredible amounts of cash killing bed bugs, and be grateful for it. And the organizational logistics of eradication? Again comparable to what they once were?

All of which is to say, let’s have any excuse to look at some photographs from a bed bug disinfestation protocol at Camp Lee (now Ft. Lee), Virginia in 1943.¹

Photos copyright Dr. Eugene J. Gerberg, used with permission, all rights reserved.

Soldiers’ gas masks were “often severely infested.”

Inspections were conducted to determine the extent of the problem (and whether local control efforts instead of fumigation would still be effective).

Bedding was disinfested in a high-pressure steam chamber. The metal beds were dipped in a vat—and altogether reconsidered, wooden bedsteads replaced, and the cracks in a remaining 4 x 4 wood support filled with putty and painted.

Hydrogen cyanide fumigation:

And finally, one of my favorite photos:

Allow none to pass.

An educational program on bedbug control should be arranged. Posters are helpful in pointing out methods of detection and eradication.

Photos copyright Dr. Eugene J. Gerberg, used with permission, all rights reserved.

I read once, in PCT, that there were congressional hearings in the 40s about army personnel and bed bugs. I’ve never been able to find the records. If anyone knows more, I’d be grateful for the details.

1. “Bedbug control by fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas discoids,” private photo album, EJ Gerberg (1943).

Related posts:

1. A (challenging) NYC apartment with a bed bug problem
2. Lou Sorkin’s indispensable flickr photos
3. Eggs, nymphs and fecal stains
4. Scenes from the battlefield: “NYC has an epidemic of them”
5. New York vs Bed Bugs (1944)

But I will make do with telling you that C.G. Johnson’s Ecology of the bed-bug (1941) is now online. Check it out.

Our previous obsession with Dr. Johnson’s bed bug masterpiece here and here and here.

Best.

Related posts:

1. Johnson’s hut, part 1.75
2. Johnson’s hut, part 1.5
3. Johnson’s hut
4. How long will it take?
5. More incidence clues: bed bugs in Denmark (plus Busvine reflecting on bed bugs in 1984)

But two years earlier Girault had published a major article about bed bugs followed by an extensive critical bibliography, likely the entire literature of bed bugs until that time, which unfortunately I haven’t found, though surely much of it is in Usinger… but I wonder if only the useful bits and not the outlandish stuff that one really wants to find. In any case, Girault wrote several articles on the bed bug. We have time for only one.

There is this remarkable passage you should see about his “very unpleasant experiences” during a summer spent in “a small town in Virginia” (Girault studied at Virginia Polytechnic):

The whole place was thoroughly infested, and it was not an uncommon thing to see mattresses and bed-slats turned out to air, which were literally white with the insect’s eggs. The writer’s room was as bad as the rest; the old-fashioned bedstead was full of them, while during the day scores of them could be detected hiding in the walls. The place was almost unbearable, for the insects were not satisfied in staying indoors, but were frequently found secreted in one’s clothes. One night, returning to the room from outside, two were found beneath the collar, while occasionally, one would be found hiding within a pamphlet which was carried in my pocket. Wherever they were very numerous, many could be found frequenting privy-houses or other similar places, where they would be sure to obtain an occasional meal, visiting the host at every chance, night or day. That these insects are very active and freely move from place to place, that is to say, not necessarily confining themselves to certain rooms or houses, and hence not directly dependent upon any one host, is evidently true.

Remarkable, yes? Reminds me of WCW’s hat.

As if that were not vivid enough, Girault continues with this account of a colleague’s bed bug experience in an entomology lab:

Mr. William F. Fiske informed me that when stationed at Tryon, North Carolina, while working in the laboratory at night, bedbugs would crawl along the under sides of the edges of the table and stealthily approaching his bared arms, would attempt to feed.

Girault, A. A. 1905. The Bedbug, Clinocoris (=Cimex=Acanthia=Klinophilos) Lectularia Linnaeus. Psyche 12: 61-74. doi:10.1155/1905/10393

(What’s with Clinocoris… Acanthia? They couldn’t figure out what to call the bed bug at one time? Pity they didn’t ask us.)

I think Girault was having a bit of fun with the following, which he cited from an 1885 source, Lintner:

A correspondent wrote as follows: “ ‘Will you tell us something about the bed-bug, what its habits are, when it “spawns,” what it eats, how long it lives, and if it ever dies? I ask because I have moved into a house that I find was already occupied by several colonies of the pest. The room in which I have my library has the most. They are in my files of papers and periodicals. They seem to grow fatter every day, but for the life of me, I cannot tell what they live on. *******. Can it be that they live on the paste on the wall paper? As for remedies, ******. The latter (red pepper), I have sifted through my papers and books, and wherever I could get it; but instead of driving them off, they seem to fatten on it; ***************.****’ ” pp. 6-7.

And we may laugh at it too, for it is fantastic. What it eats!

Girault called bed bugs abominable. Actually, odious and abominable:

The trouble then is, that definitely stated facts are wanting concerning much of the life-history of this pest. This has doubtless been caused, partly on account of its being so common everywhere, and having an extensive literature, thus causing modern writers to believe it at first glance to be well studied, and partly because of its odious character and abominable nature. The last cause seems to have the most to do with it.

And:

It is the insect most directly affecting man, and the one, if any, which should be thoroughly studied, and yet, not until as late as 1896 (Marlatt, 1896 a) was its true life-history made known.

This is not scientific literature without personality. Girault could say of the body of a first instar that had just fed that it “became stained a very beautiful, deep, purplish red.” Nymphs are described as “sordid yellow.”

Like many, he fed bed bugs himself; except for 5th instars which caused “a distinct itching sensation,” he was not responsive to the bites. These are some of his notes on feeding bed bugs:

A single nymph or larva hatching during the morning of June 24th and isolated in a small glass vial, was fed at once. It was very active after hatching, and at first made attempts to escape, though in a few minutes readily took food. Just as soon as the least bit of blood entered the body it could be traced to its destination, and as more was sucked in, the body became stained a very beautiful, deep, purplish red. The abdomen, at first flt and round in outline, soon became distended, lengthened, and cylindric, and the nymph then measured 2.00 mm.a

On the afternoon of the next day (25th), the nymph was again fed, and the abdomen was much darker, not stained as previously. Again on the morning of July 6th, it was fed. It had not changed. On the morning of July 6th, it fed long and eagerly, until the abdomen became so large and distended that it was all out of proportion to the rest of the body; it was then stained purplish red, as after the first meal. The insect after this gluttonous meal did not lose its usual activity. The first molt then occurred about 7 P. M., 7th July. It had thus fed four (4) times during the first instar.

And his findings on feeding times for each instar:

The nymphs are very voracious, and at a single meal gorge themselves until unable to hold more. The time therefore given to each meal is limited by the capacity or size of the nymph at the time of any one meal, the capacity of course depending upon, or rather being more or less bounded by, the different instars. Hence, in each instar, the time taken for any single meal is more or less definite, shorter in the earlier, longer in the later instars, as the capacity is less in the earlier, greater in the later instars.

For its first meal after hatching, in instar I, it requires on the average, about three (3) minutes to glut itself, and if another meal is taken in this instar, a slightly longer period. In instar II, five (5) minutes; in instar III, six (6) minutes; in instar IV, eight (8) minutes; in instar V, ten (10) minutes, and when adult, from ten (10) to fifteen (15) minutes. These may be taken as averages, as the time for individuals varies somewhat.

He found that adults were unable to re-feed for at least 48 hours.

This is his table detailing the lifespan and the number of eggs deposited for two females, one fed and the other unfed:

oviposition and lifespan of fed and unfed female bed bugs - Girault 1905

I think of Girault sometimes. He pops into my head. I’m glad he was in the world. And wrote about bed bugs.

Related posts:

1. Girault and the bed bugs
2. Johnson’s hut, part 1.75
3. “They are also able to withstand chilling, thawing, rechilling and again thawing”
4. “The most useful application of the bed bug alarm pheromone may be to cause dispersal.”
5. Laundry and the motivating power of the bed bug web: Q&A with Richard Naylor

Girault worked for the U.S. Bureau of Entomology. He was 23. His major work on chalcid wasps — and the many “eccentricities” that were to shape his tragic life — were in the future.

He takes pains to describe the events of the night in detail. This is his description of the room:

This room was on the second floor, and proved to be a rather small one, about 18 feet long and about 12 feet wide. It was elegantly and neatly furnished, with the walls painted a dark gray and ornamented with mural paintings of flowers; the floor was well carpeted. The bed was of iron, painted black, and the whole room, including the rest of the furniture, presented the usual neat, cleanly, and attractive appearance found in hotels of this class. The room was lighted with two 16-candle power electric globes on a chandelier suspended from the middle of the ceiling, and about six and a half feet above the floor. Also these lights were just about four feet above the bottom third of the iron bedstead; the bed was therefore in full glare of the light. A neat, bronzed steam radiator supplied heat.

The temperature in the room was 75dF.

I found a photograph of a (comparable?) hotel room, c. 1910:

A room in the Chittenden Hotel, Columbus, Ohio, c. 1910 - Library of Congress

And this is Cincinnati in 1907:

(And for more history, this is the lobby of the Hotel Havlin, one of the grand Cincinnati hotels of this time, but perhaps too grand for the account in question.)

At 12:30 am Girault noticed a third instar nymph on the bedspread:

[T]his nymph was pale. I killed it. After this, I looked the bed over, and finally decided not to get into it, but to lie across it after disrobing, leave the lights on and obtain such sleep as possible under the circumstances.

He left the light on. Like all of us have done.

This lasted half an hour before he saw several bed bugs crawling away from him “swollen with blood” — they were 2nd, 3rd, and 4th instars:

The time was about 1:20 A. M. Between this hour and 3:30 A. M., I dozed off from time to time, lying in the same place, but distinctly remember waking at 2 A. M. and 3:20 A. M. and discovering numerous specimens hurrying away over the coverlid. Each time I arose and killed all of the bugs in sight, and also those, which having been glutted from the host, had left it, crawled 2 or 3 feet away, and were hiding in the bed linen; these latter were discovered after a brief search, and were evidently hiding temporarily. At both of these times, the majority of the insects were in instars III and IV, but two were found in V, and one in I, the latter discovered coolly feeding from my fingers, and from its color, evidently obtaining its first meal. At 2 o’clock, I also killed one or two rather pale nymphs of about instar III, crawling toward the host. No adults were observed.

No adults. And one first instar.

At 3:30 am he called it quits and slept in a rocking chair until 6:00 am.

At 9:00 am he conducted a search of the bed and the room but could not find any bed bugs. There was a suitable crevice at the head of the bed but there were no bed bugs there either. The mattress was a hair mattress with covered springs. He thought they were hiding in the spring coverings. He found no bed bugs and no eggs.

And the previous night’s guests?

I learned through the kindness of the hotel management that the room had been occupied on Oct. 28th by two persons, but in spite of that fact, the bedbugs which I encountered did not seem to have been recently fed. Unfortunately, I could not ascertain whether the bed had been utilized, or whether they spent the night there.

Incredibly, this was not Girault’s first account of what he called “very unpleasant experiences” with old Cimex l. There’s a great deal more, as always! Hopefully we can review some of it next.

A. Arsène Girault, Notes on the Feeding Habits of Cimex lectularius Linnaeus, Psyche, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 85-87, 1908. doi:10.1155/1908/85427

Related posts:

1. Girault, cont’d
2. Nocturnal forays, part 1: Mellanby
3. Acts of forgetting
4. The extravagant optimism of the DDT era
5. The poet and the bed bugs