SOME EARLY VICTORIAN OWNERS. 



515 



to his jockey, and never won a shilling on the horse. It may well have been true 

 that the fact of Blue Gown having been disqualified from the Champagne Stakes 

 as a two-year-old for carrying nearly 9st., had leaked out, and given every one else 

 a strong line as to his real merit. In 1869 Pero Gomes won the St. Leger, and 

 after a sensational libel case with the Sporting Times, Sir Joseph Hawley came out 

 as a Turf reformer on the lines which I have already quoted. His condemnation 

 of two-year-old racing perhaps created a greater impression of sincerity than his 

 tirade against plunging. He knew a good deal about both ; but a congregation 

 always likes a grain or two of practice in the most eloquent of its preachers. 



Another famous racing man, whose career almost coincided with Sir Joseph 

 Hawley's, was James 

 Merry, of Glasgow, 

 owner of Chanticleer, 

 Hobbie Noble, Thor- 

 manby, Dimdee, Doncas- 

 ter, and Marie Stuart, 

 with that canny Lanca- 

 shire lad, Mr. Frederick 

 Swindell, as his com- 

 missioner. Both were 

 very remarkable cha- 

 racters, and both made 

 the Turf the study of 

 their lives with very fair 

 success ; for if " Lord 



Freddy " began his good fortune with a bet on Charles XII. for the Liverpool 

 July Cup of 1839, James Merry of Belladrum began by beating Van Tromp 

 with Chanticleer in 1848, and never looked back. It was entirely owing to 

 Swindell's detecting a plot and changing the jockey at the last minute that 

 Chanticleer won the Goodwood Stakes ; and this good horse later on became 

 the sire of Ellermire, Simbeam, and Ella, dam of Formosa, whose sire was 

 Lord Portsmouth's Buccaneer. The Derby of 1860 was full of sensational incidents 

 and heavy betting. Lord Palmerston's Mainstone and Mr. R. Ten Broeck's 

 Umpire were in the field. Fred Swindell had "put it all" on Wallace, who slipped 

 on to his nose when the flag fell, only to win ,40,000 for this acute Turfite later 



" Pero Gomez " by " Beadsman " (1866). 



