G&B Wire Mill Collection

It seems there were a few too many mice running around the Gilbert & Bennett Mfg. Co.’s buildings in the spring of 1878. That May, the company ordered two Delusion Mouse Traps. Built according to patents filed by Nebraskan John Morris in 1876 and 1877, the traps were mass produced beginning in the fall of 1877 by the Smith & Egge Mfg. Co. of Bridgeport, Conn., which quickly churned out 10,000 of them and accepted an order to produce 2 million more in early 1878. Designing a multi-mouse catching device had long been an ambition of the pest control industry. According to author David Drummond, “250 patents for multi-catch traps [were] registered in the United States prior to 1876, [but] only three resulted in the production of mouse traps and . . . none of these was particularly successful.” The “Delusion,” however, was made of sterner stuff and featured an automatic reset after each mouse, and an ingenious pair of one-way doors (involving hinges, a lever, and a counterweight) that allowed multiple mice to enter, while ensuring that none could exit. Perhaps the only drawback of the “Delusion” from the nineteenth century user's point of view was that it was not lethal. Killing the mice required a separate step. Instructions accompanying the device suggested dumping the rodents into a pail of water to drown. No further orders for “Delusion” traps have yet been found in the invoice ledgers of the Gilbert & Bennett Mfg. Co., but the company assuredly kept after its pest problem. Multiple orders, for example, were lodged for something called a Cupid Catcher. This may have been another mouse trap, but so far no information about it has been found.