AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE 437 



biggest bet. Mostly his investments were limited to 

 £2. A £5 note was a tremendous " plunge " for 

 him. Some twenty years ago, Newhouse was the 

 heaviest gambling jockey. It was nothing for him to 

 have £500 on a race. The money lost by Archer when 

 St. Mirin was beaten in the Cambridgeshire was said to 

 be a leading cause of his mind being unseated, followed 

 by his own mad act of destroying his life. 



In the season of 1878, up to 9th November, Archer's 

 total of winning mounts was 219 out of 588 races in 

 which he rode that year. His riding fees alone 

 amounted to £2200, which would most probably be 

 only a trivial part of his income. His chief backer, the 

 afore-mentioned Wales, the plunger, made him 

 presents to the extent of £2000. As showing the 

 presents jockeys or trainers receive, and that, too, 

 occasionally from people unknown to them, it may be 

 mentioned the day after Luke won the Two Thousand 

 Guineas on Petrarch he received anonymously an 

 envelope containing five £100 notes. As up to that 

 time Luke hardly knew a £5 note by sight, his feelings 

 must have been of a pleasant kind. Tom French had 

 a " menagerie " of scarfpins, one of them being worth 

 £300. It consisted of diamonds and rubies, and was 

 given to him by Baron Rothschild for winning the 

 Derby on Favonius. Archer's income from all sources 

 must have been enormous. For winning a minor race 

 like the Great Eastern Handicap, he got £500 before 

 leaving the scales. 



Superficial critics of horsemanship labour under the 

 delusion that nothing is easier in the world than the 

 making of a jockey. But the mannikins — if the 

 epithet may be permitted — of the Turf, at least those 

 in the very front rank, like poets, are born, not made. 



