372 



A HISTORy OF THE EAGLISH Tl'KF. 





driving, and for continuing- to give valuable advice on the construction of such 

 important buildings as the Pavilion stables a circular building with a dome, and 

 sixty-two stalls. His mother's death, and a windfall of ^"50,000, beside a good 

 income, postponed the crash a little longer, but by 1814 Lade had to. be rescued 

 from the King's Bench Prison. 



If the old red pump, to which Admiral Rous was so fond of giving "a lick of 

 paint," could have related its experiences on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Course, 



a good many of the bets that ruined Sir 

 John Lade, Colonel Mellish, and many 

 more, could now be recorded. For here, 

 each in his time, came Sir Robert 

 Walpole, Lord Bolingbroke, the two 

 Dukes of Grafton, the first Earl 

 Grosvenor, Lord Abingdon, Edward 

 Petre, and many more, while many 

 members of "the: ring" were there to 

 do business on horseback ; that is to 

 say, as soon as there were any pro- 

 fessional bookmakers at all. The 

 equestrian habit continued for longer 

 than might be imagined, for besides 

 Munten, who laid short odds to Cam- 

 bridge undergraduates from the back 

 of a rat-tailed nag, Barber followed the 

 same fashion, as did his vast con- 

 federate, Saxon, and Tim Haggarty, and 



Pettijean, and Dick Harrison. But by the time of " Leviathan " Davies, Harry Hill, or 

 Fred Swindell, these financial operations had reached a volume and importance 

 which needed a solid and immovable foundation. It will be, perhaps, of interest to 

 insert in this place; one of the accounts between two famous Turfites of the late 

 eighteenth century. The letter from which the following figures are taken is now 

 in the possession of a great-grandson of William Gift, the well-known jockey who 

 won five Derbys (from Sir F. Poole's Waxv to the Duke of Portland's Tiresins)* and 

 was second on some half-dozen occasions ; and it is a copy of an account taken by 

 Mr. Weatherby out of his book for stakes at Newmarket, and delivered In him 



Xa^niarkct Heath in 1807. 



