So The Book of the Horse. 



time, was obliged to take to horse-racing for want of victims ; he only died just in time to 

 save himself from the bitterness of the ruin on which, over a green table instead of green turf, 

 he had battened and fattened. His horse Ratan, a great favourite for the Derby, was poisoned 

 the night before the race, by the man shut up in the stable to guard him. 



The law, assisted by the New Police, put down gambling-houses between 1843 and 1848. 

 Hitherto legislation has not attempted to interfere with the betting transactions carried out in 

 private subscription-rooms and in the betting-rings of public racecourses, by professional gamblers 

 who strictly perform their engagements on pain of expulsion, and who are supposed to lay the 

 odds to nothing less than a "fiver," i.e., five pounds, and to owe the money until the regular 

 settling day. Ready-money gambling is illegal, and sometimes checked by the police, but in 

 1878 it was carried on conspicuously at all the great race meetings. 



The expenses of a racing stud are enormous. The winnings of a racehorse are insignificant, 

 even when such prizes as the Two Thousand Guineas, the Derby, the Oaks, or the Doncaster 

 St. Leger are landed, in comparison with the possible gains of betting on the scale in which 

 that business is now carried on. 



Betting presents — in the words of Dr. Johnson (speaking of Thrale's brewery) — to the 

 sanguine man or boy a " potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." In 1869 a 

 horse, described by a sporting reporter as " a common ninety-guinea plater," won for his owner 

 the Cambridgeshire handicap, worth ^1,900 in stakes, and _^ 12,000 in bets ! 



The losses are proportionate. A volume of Sir Bernard Burke's " Peerage," or of Mr. 

 Walford's " County Families," annotated by one of those not quite ruined gentlemen who 

 have made the turf the business of their lives, would trace the decay of many ancient 

 and noble names and the dispersion of many grand estates to losses on the turf The rise 

 of the representatives of professional betting-men to the position of landowners would be 

 equally marked and curious. 



As the value of racing stakes and number of racehorses have increased, the trade of 

 gambling in bets has been organised into a business, the professor of which regularly follows 

 circuits of the most important race-meetings, prepared to bet against every horse. Those 

 who were called " legs " or " black-legs " in the last generation, now bear the more genteel 

 name of " bookmakers." They are on the turf what jobbers are on the Stock E.xchange 

 — always ready to do business by laying against every horse in every race. They include men 

 of every degree of wealth and credit ; one virtue only being required to secure a permanent 

 place in the betting-ring and in the privileged subscription-rooms^>««c/««/ payment. Corsairs 

 of the sporting world, they must be 



" Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes." 



The most shady antecedents,* the vilest habits, a language compounded of the slang of 



• Long before Palmer had been arrested, convicted, and hanged, tor poisoning his confederate — having, there is no doubt, 

 previously poisoned his mother, his wife, and several others — the fatality that attended his friends had obtained for him among 

 his betting associates the playful nickname of "The Doser. " The year that Wild Dayrell was a favourite for the Derby the 

 use of strychnine to make horses " safe " formed the subject of a facetious correspondence in a sporting paper edited by a turf oracle. 



No saint, no martyr, ever showed greater calmness than this villain Palmer. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, then Attorney- 

 General, replied on the evidence against him in a speech of remarkable lucidity and power. When the verdict of " Guilty " 

 was delivered, Palmer wrote something on a scrap of paper, and handed it to his counsel. These were the words : " It was 

 the riding that did it." The ruling passion strong in death. 



A proprietor of travelling waxwork, who thouglit of visiting a town where Palmer had many friends, was warned not to 

 go if he had the poisoner in his "chamber of horrors." "For," said the adviser, "poor Palmer, though he was hung, was 

 very much respected at ; for whenever he had a good thing he always put us on." 



