Gentlemen Riders 



At the first meeting ever held at Sandown Park, Captain 

 Greville Nugent was very much in evidence, riding in race 

 after race with more or less success ; whilst on the day which 

 was destined to see the last of him in the saddle, he rode in 

 each of the four events preceding that in which he met his 

 death, viz. : the Selling Hurdle Race ; the Metropolitan 

 Hunters Flat Race, in which he was third ; a Selling Hunters 

 Flat Race; and the Prince of Wales's Steeplechase. In the 

 fifth event, a Selling Handicap Steeplechase, won by Mr. P. 

 Hobson's Swift, he rode a horse called Longford, and on 

 landing over the water came into collision with a spectator 

 who foolishly got in his track. 



The result was disastrous in the extreme, Longford and his 

 rider not only coming down with great force, but being jumped 

 upon in addition by the other horses following immediately 

 after. Picked up insensible, Captain Nugent never recovered 

 consciousness, and died the following day. 



Curiously enough, Longford, the horse he was riding when 

 the accident occurred, though not injured at the time, either 

 died or was killed not long afterwards. 



At one period of his career ** The Limb " occupied Melitta 

 Lodge, at the Curragh, where he trained a few horses for him- 

 self and friends ; and it was whilst in residence there that the 

 following amusing incident occurred. 



Matters had not been going quite so smoothly as they 

 ought for some little while, therefore it was that when one 

 evening a well-known military rider rode over by invitation 

 to dinner, a hearty greeting from his host was tempered with 

 a fear that the repast he would sit down to might not be 

 quite up to the mark, for his butcher, poulterer, and fish- 

 monger, having refused to a man to give him " tick," and there 

 being a deplorable absence of " ready " at the moment, there 



266 



