Definition of "ratting"

Henry Mayhew, the nineteenth-century chronicler of London's underworld, described the frenzied activity of one ratting contest. A terrier — the best of ratting dogs — was placed into a pit with 50 rats.

1993, Ronald H. Fritze, James Stuart Olson, Randy Roberts, Reflections on World Civilization: A Reader, volume 2, page 102

Bear and bull baiting, dog fights, cockfighting, ratting, and other blood sports were attacked as un-Christian […]

2001, Colin D. Howell, Blood, Sweat and Cheers: Sport and the Making of Modern Canada

The RSPCA were well aware that ratting was legally ambiguous, and when they received a report of a conviction for ratting in Hull in 1868 they doubted the legality of it.

2008, Rob Boddice, A History of Attitudes and Behaviours Toward Animals in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain, page 257

Such men usually satisfied their needs for leisure in the patronage of saloons or in such “blood” sports as cockfights or rattings.

2008, Benjamin G. Rader, Baseball: A History of America's Game, page 12

This was the pit for dog fights, cockfights and rat killing. […] At a time when ratting was largely frowned upon by respectable people in Britain, it gained considerable support in France […]

2012, Jan Bondeson, Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities