30 JOHN BAYNTON STAR KEY, ESQ. 



Fisherman again, though he ran in the name of Mr. 

 T. Parr and Mr. Higgins, as well as his own, belonged, 

 Mr. Starkey assured me, to himself ; and I think it very 

 probable it was so. In four years he won sixty-nine 

 races of the value of 10,517, and was sold for, I believe, 

 1,500 to go abroad. If to this 12,000 we add 3,000 

 for the winnings of Land Tax, Viridis, and his other 

 horses, it would give a total gain of 15,000. More- 

 over, I have Mr. Starkey's authority for believing that 

 Leamington was always his. He ran, it is true, in Mr. 

 Higgins 's name, as did Fisherman at times also. But as 

 there were extensive monetary transactions between the 

 two gentlemen, it is fair to assume that when the horses 

 passed into Mr. Higgins's hands for money advanced, 

 and from him to Mr. Starkey, most likely for a deferred 

 payment in the shape of a bill not met at maturity, they 

 would ostensibly reappear as Mr. Higgins's property ; 

 and in spite of the many changes of ownership, they 

 would really always have remained the redeemable pro- 

 perty of Mr. Starkey, as he always positively asserted 

 they were. Leamington won the Chester Cup twice, 

 besides other large stakes, and was ultimately sold to go 

 to America, where, like another expatriated horse, Buc- 

 caneer, who got Kisber in Austria, he became the sire of 

 a Derby winner in Iroquois. 



If we value Leamington and his earnings at the 

 moderate figure of 10,000, we have a total of 25,000 

 as representing Mr. Starkey's winnings. Thus it ap- 

 pears that racing in itself could not have cost him any- 

 thing, or perhaps I should say ought not to have done 

 so. And this more particularly because he was seldom 

 known to have backed a horse for anything above 10, 

 or at the outside for a pony except on Viridis at Stock- 

 bridge, when, as the plungers say, he plunged like the 



