ASHGILL. 61 



post also ; and as there seemed some difficulty in 

 arriving at the facts of the case, the race was 

 treated as a dead heat, and the owners agreed to 

 divide. Running at the wrong side of a post 

 appears to have been of rather frequent occurrence, 

 for two years later Mr. Ferguson's Grey Middle- 

 ham and Mr. Parkinson's Jannette were both 

 distanced on this account. 



The enormity of yearling racing penetrated as 

 far as Middleham, and the speedy Bedlamite, so 

 nearly allied in blood to that strain of horses with 

 which Ashgill will ever be associated, won his 

 first race in the yearling stakes here.'" 



The meeting was discontinued after 1827, but 

 was revived again in a half-hearted sort of way in 

 1834 ; and in 183G the Middleham Dinner Stakes 

 was the only race of which any record appears in 

 the Calendar. There were fifteen subscribers, 

 but what they subscribed history sayeth not, and 

 Mr. Edmundson's The Storm by Young Whisker 

 beat his four opponets. In 1838 1 the date was 

 altered from April to November, the date of 

 Middleham Moor Fair, and four races were con- 

 tested, one of them being in heats. The principal 



'■'■'■ Bedlamite would be nearly two-years-old when he ran, as 

 horses then took their age from May 1st instead of January 1st 

 as at present, and only six weeks after we find Bedlamite running 

 as a two-year-old. Bedlamite was by Welbeck out of Maniac by 

 Shuttle, and was half-brother to Luaatic by Prime Miuster, the 

 first brood mare the late Mr. King ever owned. 



+ There were no races in 1835 and 1837. 



