176 THE ENGLISH TURF 



that their efforts have been crowned with success. Sandown 

 has long been a great accomplished fact, and, in spite of 

 its possessing a very moderate course, it provides some of 

 the best racing of the year, and is attended by all that is 

 noblest and highest among the many sections of the racing 

 army. That Sandown encouraged ladies to go racing by 

 inaugurating the club system is undoubted. Before the 

 advent of the modern enclosure ladies went to Ascot, where 

 there were the Royal enclosure and the lawn to accom- 

 modate them ; a few went to the boxes at Epsom ; a good 

 many went to Goodwood ; but to Newmarket not one in 

 twenty of the present number, and at some of the meetings 

 a lady was never seen in the public enclosures, though a 

 few were to be found in carriages, or in the old-fashioned 

 " stewards' stands." Sandown, when it formed its club, 

 provided for the admission of ladies by giving two ladies' 

 badges to subscribers at the higher rate, and allowing those 

 members who paid the lower rate to take in two ladies on 

 payment of a small sum. (The old five-guinea subscription, 

 without ladies' badges, has been done away with.) This 

 example was followed by all the other clubs as they came 

 into existence, and now there are as many women as men 

 in a club enclosure, if the weather be fine, and many of them 

 even frequent the winter meetings where steeplechasing and 

 hurdle-racing are to be seen. 



The Sandown Park executive were the inaugurators of 

 the ;^ 1 0,000 race, the Eclipse Stakes, won by Bendigo in 

 1886, being the first prize of this magnitude ever run for 

 in England. Other racecourse companies followed suit, but 

 their ventures in this line were of short duration, and now 

 the Eclipse Stakes is the only ten-thousand-pounder of the 

 racing year which is offered by a modern enclosure.* Yet, 

 while similar events at Leicester, Manchester, and Kempton 

 Park had their brief day and disappeared, the Jockey Club, 

 who saw great merit in the monster prize, in 1894 estab- 



* In 1900 the Century Stakes of two miles, value ;^io,ooo, was run at 

 Sandown Park, and won by Lord Durham's Osbech. Unfortunately for the 

 best interests of racing, the race was not a success financially, and it has been 

 discontinued. 



