UPON JOCKE YS. 24 1 



Small wonder can be felt if, under these circumstances, many 

 noble patrons of the Turf occasionally assumed the duties of 

 starter at provincial meetings. The late Lord Derby and his 

 father sometimes officiated in this capacity at Prescot and 

 Liverpool ; the first Marquis of Westminster and the fifth 

 Earl of Glasgow took the flag in hand respectively at Holywell 

 and at Catterick Bridge ; and upon one memorable occasion 

 Lord George Bentinck started a large field of horses for the 

 Great Yorkshire Handicap at Doncaster in 1843. The efforts 

 of these amateurs were, as might naturally be expected, not 

 more successful than those of gendemen and ladies with a so- 

 called talent for acting, who undertake to play 'The School 

 for Scandal' and 'She Stoops to Conquer' at St. George's Hall 

 for a local charity. In the north of England and the south of 

 Ireland jockeys did what seemed to them good in their own 

 eyes. 'Win, tie, or wrangle,' were the conditions under which 

 they generally rode in Yorkshire, and nothing was more 

 common than to see a couple of them engaged in endeavouring 

 to punish each other towards the close of the race more lustily 

 than the horses they bestrode. 



Vv^e have said enough to show that half a century since, 

 when the prize-ring was still a firmly rooted institution, it was 

 necessary for a jockey, in addition to knowing how to ride, to 

 be endowed with undeniable pluck, and to be tolerably handy 

 with his fists. The natural result was that the famous horse- 

 men of George IV. 's and William IV. 's reigns were of a coarser 

 and rougher type than the jockeys whose names are now on 

 every racing tongue. In some of those who belonged to the 

 old school there was a surliness and a readiness to take umbra<Te 

 which bespoke a low origin and total lack of education. Job 

 Marson, who, upon horses which suited him, had few if any 

 superiors in the saddle, looked upon a Newmarket rival with 

 ill-concealed aversion. When informed that some crack south- 

 country jockey had come north to ride a favourite in some great 

 race which he thought himself sure to win, he would reply in 

 his gruff way, ' Do he ; then I tell ee that he woant.' Bill Scott's 



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