PREPONDERANCE OF BOY JOCKEYS. 203 



He says, " Short races are destructive to young riders ; the 

 custom encourages them to fight for the start, and to ride like 

 chimney-sweeps on donkeys. I have never seen worse riding 

 than amongst the young crack jockeys this autumn." Again : 

 " The dete iioir of racing is the unsatisfactory system of start- 

 ing, and the helplessness of the official starter to control the 

 audacity of the young jockeys, who frequently set him at 

 defiance." 



The existence, then, of these two evils — the helplessness 

 of the official and the insolence of the light-weight jockeys — 

 is admitted, whilst the authorities have the power to remove 

 them by the simple process of raising the scale of weights. 

 Indeed the dearth of bond fide riders, or men, and the super- 

 abundance of so-called jockeys, or boys, are so markedly con- 

 trasted that I have been led to compile a little table from the 

 three great handicaps run last year (1878) at Goodwood, and 

 from the three run at head-quarters. From this, which I 

 append, it will be seen that at the former place, out of forty-six 

 runners only six carried 8 st. 7 lb. or above, whilst forty 

 carried lesser weights, down to 5 st. 7 Ibs.^ 



But disheartening as such a discovery is, it is positively 



^ A Table of the three great handicaps run for at Goodwood ; also of the three 

 big handicaps run for at Newmarket in the October and Houghton Meetings, 1878; 

 showing the number of horses that ran in each, and how many respectively carried 

 8 st. 7 lbs. and above it, and a lesser weight down to 5 st. 7 lbs. inclusive : — 



Horses carrying 

 Horses carrying 8 St. 7 lbs., or above it. less than 8 st. 7 lbs. 



The Steward's Cup 3 17 



The Goodwood Stakes 2 ... 14 



Chesterfield Cup I 9 



6 40 



Newmarket, Great Eastern Handicap, . o 16 



Cffisarewitch Stakes o 20 



Cambridgeshire Stakes i 38 



I 74 



