Warning – this is not a nice story! Two children were attacked in their bed by the family ferret, which had escaped from its cage. Ferrets were generally used for hunting rabbits (for the pot) as they were thin and could go down into the warren. Nowadays, they are used to help control rabbit numbers.
“On Friday evening, two girls of the ages of four and five years, belonging to a person named Howard, living in the Old Londond road, St., Alban’s, were attacked by a ferret while asleep in bed. The mother of the children, after she had put them to bed, between eight and nine o’clock in the evening, went into a neighbouring house, where hearing the screams of her children, she came home, and on going up stairs, to her astonishment and alarm, found the bed clothes covered with blood, the children crying, and a ferret fastened to the eye-lid of one of them. The woman was greatly agitated, but removed the dangerous animal as speedily as possible. One examining the children, their eye-lids and hands were found bitten in several places : on the latter, the injuries were received in the attempts to drive the ferret away. The affected parts soon became much swollen and showed symptoms of inflammation, and the children were deprived for a few days of their sight, but they are both fast recovering. The ferret belongs to Howard, the father of the children, who kept it in a hutch down stairs, from which place it made its escape, and found its way up stairs to the children’s bed.” – Essex Herald.
The Stamford Mercury, 8th January, 1847.