42 SPORTING STORIES 



sensational Derby of 1867 were ;^ 103,000, and he had to 

 part with his fine Scottish estate of Loudoun to meet them. 

 " Hermit fairly broke my heart," he confessed to a friend a 

 few days before his death. 



But that fatal year saw him receive another terrific facer 

 when Lady Elizabeth failed to win the Middle Park Plate, 

 and he dropped ;^ 50,000. Before a twelvemonth had 

 passed, he was a defaulter to the tune of ^40,000. The 

 rest of the miserable story, the scandals attaching to Lady 

 Elizabeth and the earl, I pass over in silence. When he 

 was last seen on a race-course at the Newmarket First 

 October 1868, the bookmakers would not trust him even 

 to the extent of a " pony " ; and perhaps they were not to 

 be blamed, for when they had been disposed to trust him 

 generously and accept his offer to pay his big creditors 7s. 

 in the £ and his small creditors in full, he had failed to 

 keep his promise. A month later he was dead, in his 

 twenty-seventh year. 



Another plunger was Ernest Benzon, commonly known 

 as the "Jubilee Juggins," who got through a fortune of 

 ;£^25o,ooo in two years, although now and then he had his 

 good times. He won, I believe, ;^i6,ooo over Exmoor's 

 victory in the Northumberland Plate ; and when Ormonde 

 beat Minting and Bendigo for the Hardcastle Stakes at 

 Ascot, in 1887, he pulled off ;^2O,O0O. I remember, too, 

 his taking a bet of i^ioo to a sovereign about Mr John 

 Wingrove Smith's Miss Dollar winning the Duke of York's 

 Stakes at Kempton Park and pulling it off. But a man 

 who could drop thousands at baccarat in a single evening 

 scarcely needed plunging on the Turf to bring him to ruin. 



The number of men who have at one time or another 

 won fortunes on the Turf and then let their winnings slip 

 from them is extraordinary. Ridsdale, who, with Gully as 

 a partner, won the Derby twice, died in a garret at New- 

 market without the price of a pint of ale to bless himself 

 with ; while William Chiffney, the owner of the celebrated 

 Priam, whose establishment at Newmarket rivalled Crock- 

 ford's in its magnificence, died nearly as badly oflf as 

 Ridsdale. 



At one time Mr Brayley was " tired of winning," but in 



