28 SPORTING STORIES 



After the West Australian business, the truth about 

 which was known everywhere, Harry Hill did not do much 

 business on the Turf, and lived some years in retirement. ' 



He died — a wretched, blind old man — in 1880, and left no 

 will. The only property he was known to be possessed of 

 was Ackworth Park, which he had purchased from Gully. 

 What became of all the rest of his wealth remains to this 

 day a mystery. 



Another famous bookmaker of the highest type was 

 " Leviathan" Davis. Like most other famous betting men, 

 Davis was a self-made man. He began life as a carpenter 

 at Cubitt's, the well-known contractors. It was as a 

 backer that he made his first great coup. He stood Sir 

 Tatton Sykes for the Two Thousand of 1846, and won such 

 a pot of money that he was able to give up carpentering 

 and set up as a professional betting man. As Davis's 

 customers became more and more numerous, he was 

 pestered out of his life by endless questions as to the 

 prices of individual horses in the betting market. This 

 interfered with the booking of the bets, and at last the 

 happy thought suggested itself that he would have all the 

 prices written out and hung up where everyone could 

 consult them. This was the origin of the famous betting 

 lists which were in vogue in London until the Act of 1853 

 suppressed them. 



The first of these lists of Davis's was hung in the Durham 

 Arms, Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and so enormous 

 was the trade which it brought to the house that in a few 

 years the landlady retired in possession of a very handsome 

 fortune. The second list was posted at Barr's in Long 

 Acre, and there Davis and his clerks stood behind big 

 bankers' ledgers, entering the bets as fast as their pens 

 could go. So safe was Davis by this time that one of his 

 winning tickets was considered everywhere as negotiable 

 as a Bank of England note. 



His first heavy hit is said to have been for ^12,000 over 

 The Cur for the Cesarewitch ; but, strange to say, Davis was 

 singularly unlucky in his books on the Derby and Oaks, 

 though on the first named he sometimes made one as high 

 as ;^ 100,000. He was ^^"50,000 to the bad over The Flying 



