74 RACING. 



ings. Accordingly, in 1875, the Grand Stand, with its appanage 

 of refreshment rooms, telegraph offices, bars, stables, hack- 

 sheds and rings, was constructed under the auspices of Sir John 

 Astley. Scant indeed up to this date had been the provision 

 for the comforts of even the privileged few. Three forlorn- 

 looking edifices there were, two of them wholly or in part 

 appropriated for the weighing and jockeys' dressing-rooms, the 

 third a private stand, and the accommodation thus afforded was 

 open only to members of the rooms or Jockey Club. Horses 

 were saddled anywhere, but where was not always an easy 

 matter for the owner or jockey to discover. Martin Starling 

 and a posse of rustics armed with staves kept the course, and 

 the Cambridgeshire Hill was guarded in the evening from pro- 

 fane hoof-marks by the simple expedient of fastening across it, 

 secured to two or three strong stakes, a sewin, or rope garnished 

 with bunches of feathers, over which the homeward galloping 

 plunger was at liberty to break his neck if by his own careless- 

 ness or the waywardness of his hack he failed to steer clear ot 

 the almost invisible obstacle. A fatal accident of this nature did 

 indeed once occur, and the tragic fate of Mr. Blackwood in the 

 dim twihsht of an autumn afternoon was the final cause of 

 the abolition of the roped runs-in. 



The locale of the betting-ring was more than once changed, 

 and each time, as it seemed, to a bleaker and more wind-swept 

 spot. In those times the backers, almost to a man, did their 

 day's racing on horseback, the ring men who could ride follow- 

 ing the example, but bookmakers for the most part clustered 

 in and about flys, which even then appeared to be in the last 

 stage of decrepitude, but which are still apparently in com- 

 mission on the Heath. A few broughams there were, tenanted 

 then as now chiefly by the press reporters (for the art of 

 writing despatches on the saddle-bow is still, we believe, con- 

 fined to a very select circle of war correspondents), and per- 

 chance a dozen landaus or barouches conveyed to the scene of 

 action the ladies whose speculative energy tempted them to 

 brave the vicissitudes of Newmarket weather ; while, as is their 



