NAT FLATMAN. 143 



employer and trainer agreeing and understanding 

 each other so thoroughly. Sometimes it happens 

 that all the integrity of an owner, all the skill 

 and devotion of a trainer, are baffled by the dis- 

 honesty of a jockey. Many such cases have I 

 known in my time ; but I cannot resist going out 

 of my way to put on record what I know of El- 

 nathan Flatman, one of the most honourable 

 and meritorious men of his class that I ever en- 

 countered. 



Flatman, better known by the abbreviated 

 sobriquet of "Nat," was born in 1810 at the 

 village of Holton, or Holton St Mary, in Suffolk. 

 His father (a small yeoman farmer) gave him a 

 good education at a school kept by a clergyman 

 near to the house in which Nat was born ; but in 

 a few years the father failed, and the boy, a pigmy, 

 less than 4 stone in weight, gravitated to New- 

 market, where in a fortunate moment for himself 

 he obtained employment in the stable of William 

 Cooper, one of the most upright trainers and best 

 men that ever lived. I have often heard Colonel 

 Peel say that when Nat knocked, as a boy, at 

 William Cooper's back-door, he carried all his 

 worldly goods in a bundle slung to a stick, thrown 

 over his right shoulder. In 1825 there were plenty 

 of stables at Newmarket and elsewhere in which 

 the atmosphere was far less pure than that of the 

 establishment into which Nat was inducted, and of 

 which Colonel Peel was for many years the pre- 



