174 CUSTOM AND MOTIVES OF FALSE STARTING. 



throughout the first or present Season, in the Bills of fare of every Race Course 

 throughout these Kingdoms. 



We have preferred the sounding a bugle or drum, to the dropping of a flag, since 

 the flag, it has been said, might alarm some young horses, and cause them to 

 swerve, or bolt. In regard to the difficulty experienced by Riders of young restiff, 

 or fractious horses, and the uncertainty of starting such, those contingencies are 

 obviously, and in the view of common sense, their own and the proprietor's chance, 

 or if you will, misfortune, and which every Jockey is fairly bound to risk, equally 

 with that other possible risk of breaking his neck. It is an unfair expectation in 

 any one, to be insured from these risks, granting such insurance possible, since it 

 must be done at the expense of some other, namely, of him who rides a horse that 

 will start readily and well, a legitimate advantage or fair pull, of which he ought 

 not to be deprived, and in which no competitor can claim a right to share. And 

 after all the logic which can be chopped upon the subject, the arguments of a Cor- 

 respondent above quoted, will in a certain degree, maintain their validity in a fair 

 point of view the start is not of that mighty consequence, in a race of any consi- 

 siderable length, which has been assigned to it. Indeed could Old Dick Goodison 

 start up from his resting place, mounted upon Rocket, as we have seen him in days 

 of yore, ready to start for a quarter of a mile race, he might tell our Younkers 

 something about starting. In short, not the Rouge et Noir, in which there was 

 a good pull, but the parfail egalite of the business seems to decide that, all Race 

 Horses, speedy or stout, hot and choleric or cool tempered, restiff or quiet, should 

 take their equal chance, both in the placing, and at the start ; in the same manner 

 as all, however various their qualifications and powers, must each depend upon his 

 own individual exertions, or good luck in the race. 



We have been dilating on fair advantages. In these, the fair and equal 

 rights of the Turf, every Sportsman ought to be protected. So far as regulation 

 goes, lies the province of the Jockey Club, and that honourable body cannot give 

 protection to any thing-, unfair, since it is absolutely contrary to the nature of 

 their institution. Nor ought any custom or thing of that description, upon the 

 Turf, to be suffered to derive encouragement from inattention or neglect. The 

 false starts, every man who frequents the Race Course, well knows to have had 

 certain motives not of the fairest kind, and to have become so much the order of the 

 Course, that they have been for a long time looked upon by Jockies as a fair pull \ 

 and a readiness in getting up a false start, and raising a call-back, have been 

 deemed accomplishments in a Jockey, well worth the labour of acquisition. Nor 

 has this manoeuvre wanted the encouragement of Gentlemen, at least trainers of 

 Race Horses, many of whom it is not whispered, are equally fond of a pull per fas 

 aut nefas, as their trainers and jockeys. " Every one," says an intelligent 

 Oxfordshire Sportsman, " knows that Jockies are sometimes ordered not to go off, 

 till the Judge has been several times disappointed, and the order given that they 



