UPON JOCKEYS. 



J3 



John and William Scott have never been undertaken by a com- 

 petent hand. No other jockey ever won the St. Leger nine 

 times, although John Jackson with eight wdnners scored a capi- 

 tal proxinie accessit. The leading features of Bill Scott's life 

 are well known, and a brief glance at his thirty-three years 

 in the saddle will suffice here. To his nine St. Legers he 

 added four victories for the Derby, three for the Oaks, 

 and three for the Two Thousand ; but his fame and re- 

 putation, in the opinion of those who knew him best, rested 

 chiefly upon the superlative excellence of his judgment as a 

 trier of horses. No crack jockey that came from Newmarket 

 to take part in a Whitewall trial was ever allowed to know 

 which was the best horse engaged therem. That precious in- 

 formation w^as reserved for the ears of John Scott and of 

 Colonel Anson, by the latter of whom the stable commission 

 was worked with admirable discretion. When Bill Scott died 

 in 1848 at the age of fifty, the event was said to have eclipsed 

 the gaiety of Yorkshire, whose favourite jockey he had long 

 been. His racy sayings ; his mysterious midnight departures 

 from his house on the edge of Knavesmire at York for White- 

 wall as the Two Thousand Guineas stakes drew near ; his tips, 

 always veracious, to one or two tried friends like Mr. George 

 Swann, the York banker, but generally misleading when imparted 

 to casual acquaintances ; his tremendously energetic finishes 

 when riding a coarse slug like Mundig, out of whom he cut 

 the Derby with whip and spur ; his inimitable stories, with 

 Captain Frank Taylor of the 13th Light Dragoons (the owner 

 of Ainderby, who once beat the Queen of Trumps), and also 

 with the still living Mr. W. H. Rudston Read, with little Charley 

 Robinson, the sporting chemist of York, and with Sim Temple- 

 man for audience ; these, and a thousand other memories, will 

 long keep the name of Bill Scott ^ alive in the racing metropolis 

 of the north. 



1 That Bill Scott was scrupulous cannot be said. In the Derby of 1840 — 

 the first, and we believe the only, one ever seen by the late Prince Consort — 

 Scott was on Launcelot (brother to Touchstone) and Macdonald on Little 

 Wonder. Scott had backed his horse heavily, feeling confident of success ; 



