JOCKEYS. 345 



Scott for writing his celebrated poem, " The Lady 

 of the Lake." 



These princely gifts, as they may be called^ 

 contrast with those modest presents which were 

 given to jockeys by their masters and patrons 

 at an earlier time. After John Day, who was one 

 of the chief jockeys of his time, had in one week 

 achieved victory in two of the classic races for his 

 master, the Duke of Grafton, his grace sent for 

 him and said: "John Day, I am going to make 

 you a present for the manner in which you have 

 ridden my horses this week ; I am about to give 



you £20 in bank-notes of Messrs. 's bank 



at Bury St, Edmund's, most highly respectable 

 bankers." That sum was considered a handsome 

 present in those days, when a successful jockey, if 

 a married man, was generally rewarded with a 

 side of bacon, a cheese, a bag of potatoes, or a 

 barrel of home-brewed ale, in addition to his 

 wages, for at the time indicated horse-riders were 

 grooms rather than jockeys. Persons who " back," 

 as it is called in racing argot, successful horses to 

 win them large sums of money, are generally, in the 

 exultation of the moment, very open-handed, and 

 think it right to give a winning jockey a ten or 

 twenty pound note, or even a larger sum, ac- 

 cording to the scale of their luck. Upon a recent 

 occasion, bank-notes of the value of ^500 were 

 anonymously sent to a jockey at Newmarket who 

 won a race on a horse the victory of which at the 

 time was most unexpected. The animal in ques- 

 tion, during the winter preceding the race, had 

 been made favourite, but latterly — that is, before 

 the day fixed for the decision of the contest — the 

 horse was represented to be out of condition and 



