SCHOOL DAYS 3 



Brittan had made the lads warm and comfortable — 

 the motherly solicitude of the dame being especially 

 appreciated on wet and wintry mornings — ' master ' 

 was all austerity and strict attention to study. After 

 school was ' after school ' to him, as well as to his 

 scholars. John remained at his studies, where, 

 thanks to the educational method of excellent Mr. 

 Brittan, he was thoroughly grounded in all the 

 essentials of a good plain education for a period of 

 six years. While there he made friendships which 

 exercised a marked influence on his subsequent 

 career, and were only severed by death. One 

 of his schoolfellows was Tom Ashmall, whose 

 father, a country squire, resided at an old ancestral 

 mansion called Fairwell Hall. Tom Carr, another 

 Hednesford trainer, was Ashmall's uncle. John often 

 spent his holidays at Fairwell Hall, and together 

 the lads would make excursions to Carr's, so that, as 

 Porter expresses it, ' even in those early days I was 

 among racehorses.' The jockeys whom he became 

 acquainted with at that time — there were never 

 very many regularly located at Hednesford — were 

 Charles Marlow and George Whitehouse. He also 

 got to know FlintofT, the trainer, and Bradley, a 

 well-known trainer of steeplechasers. Among the 

 horses he most distinctly remembers are Chanticleer 

 and King Cole, especially the latter, ' the first horse 

 he was ever put across.' Charles Marlow was one 

 of the famous jockeys of his time. Among other 

 records of him in the pages of ' The Druid ' there 

 is one in which he and King Cole are amusingly 



B 2 



