28 JOHN BAYNTON STARKEY, ESQ. 



The other is the thoughtless gentleman, who, having all 

 the attainments needful to make racing and the race- 

 course a scene of enjoyment as great to others as himself, 

 yet for the lack of discretion mars the most praiseworthy 

 intentions, to the detriment of the sport itself. Indeed, 

 I am not prepared to say that the latter is not, uncon- 

 sciously, the more harmful of the two. For he sets an 

 example followed by those who look up to him as a pillar 

 of the turf and one of its most honourable supporters. 

 The adventurer pure and simple, on the other hand, is a 

 character too well known to have the power to influence 

 either the sport itself or other people. So long as he 

 keeps within the pale of the broad rules which regulate 

 racing and the peculiar shrewdness of the class enables 

 it generally to manage to do so whatever the adven- 

 turer may do is little noticed, and certainly not openly 

 canvassed. 



Mr. John Baynton Starkey may be taken as an illus- 

 trative example of the class I refer to the racing gentle- 

 man who, if he possesses the power of discriminating 

 between good and evil, for some fortuitous or unaccount- 

 able reasons elects to follow the latter. For the short 

 time he was with us no man could have been better 

 known, or more universally respected, until the period 

 of his utter collapse, when it was discovered that he was 

 shrouded in embarrassments and unable to pay his way 

 or face his troubles. Then he presented the pitiable 

 spectacle of the man who has inflicted loss on all with 

 whom he has been connected, without the palliation of 

 becoming so reduced through unavoidable misfortune. 

 Mr. Starkey was well educated, generous to a degree, if 

 eccentric to folly. To this eccentricity perhaps his 

 downfall may be attributed. He was markedly unos- 

 tentatious in his mode of living, and had no apparent 



