568 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



brothers had a special favourite. The eldest, Thomas, preferred Tomboy, sire of 

 Nittwith. Matthew loved Thormanby. Nothing shook Joseph's allegiance to 

 Prince Charlie. But they were far from being "one-horse men." In fact, three 

 of them were absolutely the making of Newmarket as a training centre in the sixties, 

 and it is not too much to say that no single family of trainers have ever done so 

 much for the English Turf. Their father trained at Gullane at the period I have 

 mentioned in previous chapters, when John Scott at Whitewall was " the wizard 

 of the North," when Croft and Lonsdale were at Middleham, when Robson was 

 carrying all before him in the South. After the downfall of Whitewall and Danebury, 

 it was the Dawsons who stepped into the breach, and since 1850 the record of 

 the family is astonishing. They have carried off the Two Thousand twelve times, 

 the One Thousand ten times, eleven Derbys, eight victories in the Oaks, ten 

 St. Legers, and four wins in the Ascot Gold Cup. When Galopin died at the age 

 of twenty-eight in 1899, his stock had won close upon five hundred races, of an 

 aggregate value of a quarter of a million sterling, and his most famous son, St. Simon, 

 is still the champion stallion of the world (May, 1903). John, the last of the four 

 brothers, is just dead, but he has left two sons, John, with a big stable at 

 Newmarket, and George, who at Heath House trained Donovan, Ayrshire, Memoir, 

 Mrs. Butterwick, Amiable, and Semolina. But after carrying off in succession a 

 brace of Derbys, a brace of Oaks, a brace of St. Legers, a Two Thousand, a third 

 Oaks, and ,73,000 odd in a single season for the Duke of Portland, George seemed 

 inclined to rest upon his laurels, and has been very quiet of late years. 



Tom, the eldest son of the old Gullane trainer, rarely crossed the border for 

 a long time, and then never went further south than Middleham. He was very 

 popular in the North, and trained Pretender, who beat Pero Gomez by a head after 

 a desperate struggle, ridden by J. Osborne, in 1869. Long before that his three 

 brothers had migrated to the metropolis of the Turf. John had been with the 

 eccentric Earl of Glasgow for a time, but he was at Compton soon after, near 

 Matthew, while his brother Joseph was at Ilsley. When Matthew went to Russley, 

 and Joseph to Newmarket, John soon followed, and began that connection with 

 Prince Batthyany at Warren House which meant so much to both of them from 

 1 86 1 until the tragic afternoon in 1883 when Galliard won the Two Thousand 

 after a close race, and the owner of Galopin fell dead in the Rowley Mile stand as 

 his favourite's son passed the post. At the sale which followed St. Simon was 

 purchased for 1,600 guineas. 



