22 The Old Surrey Fox Hounds 



deserve a more cordial recognition if the demands on our 

 space were less imperative : — 



Mr. John Henry Smith, of Purley, who was a great 

 amateur farmer and hard rider ; Mr. Thomas Parker, of 

 Lewisham, very neat and well turned out ; Mr. W. G. 

 Farmer, of Nonsuch Park, Cheam, who rode good cattle ; 

 Charles Turner, of Carshalton, a well-known vet. and a 

 quaint customer, who was a hard man over a natural 

 country when hounds were running ; Mr. John Shaw, of 

 Beddington, who hunted with consistent enthusiasm all 

 his life, and continued to do so till he had reached an 

 advanced age. There were, besides, a large number of 

 City men who joined this gay throng regularly, enjoying 

 the sport more thoroughly by force of its contrast with 

 their ordinary humdrum avocations ; so it was remarked, 

 " the field was all stocks or stockings." 



At that time there happened to be three very big men 

 hunting with the Surrey, whose united weight must have 

 been quite sixty stone ; and the fattest of the three once 

 said to his friends, whilst drawing their attention to an 

 obese farmer perspiring close to, " How these yeomen 

 thrive ! They are so deep in the brisket. If they would 

 only work hard, as I do ! " He had probably never done 

 a stroke of hard work in his life : hence that excess of 

 adiposity. Mr. Horlock, of Limpsfield, a nephew of 

 " Scrutator," was a bit of a thruster ; one day he 

 jumped over a huge railway gate on to the line and 

 out again — a feat which was so vastly admired by a 

 nobleman who saw it done that he stated that if he had 



