SCEPTRE' WINS!' 



687 



owner. Mr. Frank Gardner, for example, who had a very fair share of luck, 

 sold off the whole of the large racing stud he kept at Foxhall in Wiltshire, 

 as he found the balance was invariably on the wrong side. In France, however, 

 his expenses were not much more than a third of what they had been, and the 

 prizes to be won were more substantial. Newmarket establishments such as those 

 lately left vacant by Sir J. Blundell Maple, Prince Soltykoff, Mr. W. C. Whitney, or 

 Mr. J. R. Keene, cannot be run on much less than ,7,000 a year, and there are not 

 so many men nowadays who care to risk that amount on so uncertain a pursuit. 

 The fact that English owners no longer bet as they used to do should it may 

 be imagined enable them easily to contribute what they are asked by the racing 

 authorities, and the few 

 "bad debts" now pub- 

 lished by Weatherby 

 are certainly in brilliant 

 contrast to the old days. 

 But the disappearance 

 of such gigantic wagers 

 as those common in the 

 days of Lord George 

 Bentinck, of Mr. Gully, 

 of Lord Glasgow, or 

 Mr. Merry, is not un- 

 fortunately only trace- 

 able (if traceable at all) 

 in the vastly increased 



stakes now run for each year on the English Turf. It is more than balanced by 

 what is really a far greater evil, and an evil which antagonists of the Turf have 

 fastened upon with far too little prospect, as yet, of receiving a just answer. 



People who could afford to bet do not do so now, because they are among the 

 few who can afford the large expenses of a racing stable. But betting as a means of 

 running a small stud by men who could not otherwise afford what is a luxury in these 

 expensive days betting among labourers, clerks, and working men who cannot 

 afford to risk a penny of their wages, who never saw the horse they back, and who 

 are the prey of fraudulent starting-price bookmakers this kind of betting has 

 become little short of an abominable curse. I am heartily in sympathy with Admiral 





" Royal Lancer" (1899) by " Royal Hampton." 



