150 SOLDIER AND SPORTSMAN 



oft declared that, whatever race-ridincr deHsfht he 

 gained in the Liverpool Grand National, first on 

 Disturbance and the next year on Reuguy, on the 

 last afternoon at Epsom, in 1872, when Fordham 

 won the Oaks for Mr Lefevre on Reine, that 

 mount the Captain gave him on Lord Lonsdale's 

 Bickerstaffe in the Welter, where amateurs and 

 professionals were opposed to each other on the 

 old Bibury lines, made him equally as proud as 

 either of those Liverpool victories, as he found 

 himself well round Tattenham Corner, and in the 

 straight, holding in safe-keeping sixteen opponents, 

 the best of which proved to be his Majesty's now 

 trainer, Richard Marsh, who divided him from 

 that prince of Corinthians, the late Mr William 

 Bevill. Bickerstaffe won by half-a-length, and 

 besides Marsh, who I think was one of Captain 

 Machell's earliest helpmates at Newmarket, other 

 professionals Mr Richardson then had against him 

 were Custance, Tom Cannon, J. Morris, R. Wyatt, 

 Parry, and Jem Goater, all noted jockeys of that 

 period. Again, curiously enough, a recent peep 

 of that Bickerstaffe's race, there is the reminder 

 that my old friend Mr Arthur Yates was among the 

 other amateurs who rode in that six-furlong Oaks 

 Day Welter contest. That, I am told, was not 

 Mr Richardson's first sweets of victorious ridine 

 on the Surrey Downs, for in the spring of the 



