LA YING A GA INST DBA D UNS ' 53 



adroit art of these professors, and could [not ^possibly 

 know what would be the course which, in their own 

 interest, it would be best to pursue. So far, perhaps, 

 there was nothing illegitimate in such action. But we 

 must remember that many of those employed, partly 

 from innate dishonesty, and partly from the example 

 set them by their employers, become worse than their 

 instructors ; and not content with laying against * dead 

 uns,' took to laying on their own account against the 

 horses they had undertaken to back for their owners. 

 Moreover, to carry the system to success, it became 

 necessary to bring into requisition the services of stable- 

 boys, jockeys, and others. And their aid was secured in 

 a manner to defy detection. What evil motives have not 

 been, as the result of these nefarious practices, rightly or 

 wrongly imputed to well-known jockeys, who, in conse- 

 quence, have suffered the severest penalties ? Or it may 

 be again asked, how many disreputable * commissioners ' 

 have not made their fortunes out of these dishonest 

 manoeuvres at the expense of their confiding patrons ? 



To Messrs. Gully, Hill, and their confederates may be 

 attributed, if not the initiation, at least the perfecting of 

 this pernicious system. As to the state of the turf at the 

 time, and the manners of these its parasites, let us hear 

 what ' Sylvanus ' has to say, writing of Doncaster in 

 1832: 



' We remember the scene in the betting-rooms at Don- 

 caster in Margrave's year, when old Frank Bichardson, 

 the blacksmith, a noted turfite, a man who once con- 

 fessed to a friend that nothing but sobriety had kept him 

 from being hanged, was in the room with the Bonds, who 

 had a horse in the St. Leger called Ludlow. These men 

 were tabled, with old Beardsworth of Birmingham 

 formerly driver of a hackney-coach, but then keeper of 



