THE WASTING OF JOCKEYS 71 



sayeth not ; but next morning Wattie let the cat out of 

 the bag with a hearty laugh, and then Matthew Dawson 

 discovered to his horror that he had been hob-nobbing 

 with the Duke of Buccleuch ; but " Wattie " gave him a 

 firm shake of the hand, saying he was the right man in the 

 right place, and a jolly good fellow to boot. 



And the mention of Mat Dawson reminds me of a curious 

 story of his brother Tom of Tupgill. When Ellington won 

 the Derby in 1856, Tom Dawson of Tupgill, who trained 

 the colt, netted about ;^2 5,000. On the Monday after the 

 race he went to Tattersalls to receive his money. The 

 whole of it was paid to him in bank-notes. After the 

 settling, he dined, and took the train for home, first having 

 packed his bank-notes in an old leathern hat-case without 

 any lock, but simply tied with a piece of string. He fell 

 asleep in the train, and when the guard, who knew him well, 

 awoke him at Northallerton and told him he must change 

 carriages, Mr Dawson got out, leaving the old hat-case 

 behind. In those days telegraphy was not quite so simple 

 a matter as now, and Mr Dawson did not recover his hat- 

 case for a whole week, during which time it had travelled 

 to Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and various other places. Ulti- 

 mately it came back to the rightful owner with the string 

 neither cut nor untied, and with all the bank-notes safe 

 inside. I need hardly say that Mr Dawson, with that 

 astuteness that never forsakes the professional Turfite, 

 took care not to display the slightest anxiety about his 

 hat-case, but merely informed the station-master that he 

 had had it for a good many years, and as there were 

 some papers in it of no use to anyone but himself, he 

 should like to recover it. 



I will bring these recollections of jockeys to an end with 

 an amusing adventure of Mornington Cannon and Cordelia 

 on the Cesarewitch day of 1891. As the horses were 

 leaving the Birdcage for the Autumn Handicap, one of the 

 fiercest storms ever known at Newmarket swept over the 

 Heath. The hailstones came down like pistol-bullets, and 

 Cordelia, maddened at the tempest, swerved, made for the 

 rails, and ran through them, getting her head under the 

 second line of posts, and sending Mornington over the 



