RACING ROGUERIES. 



"The turf is so beset with knaves that when 

 you go racing you are robbed when you least 

 expect to be robbed, and that too by men whom 

 you would least expect to rob you." 



So wrote a racing commentator sixty years 

 since, and the same sentence might be written 

 to-day, with a still greater chance of hitting the 

 nail on its head. When, half a century ago, some 

 isolated case of turf fraud of a high degree of 

 enormity became public, a prodigious outcry was 

 raised regarding the circumstance — as would 

 doubtless be done to-day — by a section of turfites, 

 much indignation being usually expressed, espe- 

 cially by those not "in the swim" ; but to-day racing 

 rogueries are too numerous, too varied, too much 

 a matter of course to attract much attention, and 

 for this among other reasons, namely, that " they 

 all do it." It may well be said as regards the turf 

 and its surroundings, " Let him who is among you 

 without sin cast the first stone." 



Happily, there almost never falls nowadays 

 to be chronicled any vulgar or pronounced frauds 

 — these seldom become public. He would prove 

 himself but a poor hand in turf chicanery who 



