375 



place as the last match and in the following month, he ran Captain 

 Marston of the 48th Regimrnt that distance for 100 guineas a-side 

 and beat him easily in 5min. 7sec., Marston being then the best 

 amateur "miler" in England. 



John Ireland of Manchester, probably the best jumper that ever 

 lived and no mean professional miler, was now sent to lower the 

 Captain's colours. The stake was 500 guineas a-side, the date October 12, 

 1804, and the ve7iue again at Eastbourne ; but Allardice ran him to a 

 standstill at three-quarters of a mile and did the full distance in four 

 minutes fifty seconds, then the fastest one mile time on record, and 

 remained so for twenty-one years, when Metcalf accomplished four 

 minutes thirty seconds. 



The 23rd Fusiliers now going abroad with Lord Cathcart's army 

 for the protection of Hanover, Captain Allardice had no leisure for 

 pedestrianism until he returned, when on August 4, 1806, he ran Mr. 

 Goulbourne of the Royal Horse Guards a quarter mile at Lord's 

 Cricket Ground, but he cleared him out at the end of 300 yards, tha 

 Captain finishing alone in sixty-two seconds. In the last month of 

 that year he ran 100 miles from Ury to Craithynaird and back over 

 bad roads and at the break of a heavy storm in 19 hours. 



His second great public match (the first being the "90 in 21 V') 

 came off at Newmarket on October 12, 1807. It was with Abraham 

 Wood, the celebrated Lancashire professional, who was backed 

 against the Captain for 500 guineas a-side as to which of the two 

 could run the farthest in twenty-four hours, the Captain to receive 

 twenty miles at the finish. Never did Wood's backers assign him a 

 more hopeless task. No man then, or probably ever living, could have 

 given Allardice such a start in a twenty-four hours' run. The Captain 

 trained at East Dean under the pugilists Gully and Ward. An 

 enormous crowd assembled to see this match, which was over a 

 measured mile roped and staked between Newmarket and the Ditch. 

 It resulted in the Captain's winning, but Wood gave up at the end 

 of forty miles, having been drugged with laudanum at the end of twenty 

 miles by some of his own " backers " (?) who had been betting against 

 him all along. Had Wood stood up he, bar accidents, could not have 

 beaten the Captain, who, by his ninety miles match, showed that he 

 could go a little over six miles an hour for twenty-four hours, which 

 would total some 150 miles, and would necessitate Wood going 170 or 

 perhaps 175 miles, a feat quite beyond his power. 



A great deal of unpleasantness arose over the settlement of bets on 

 this match, and while no aspersion was made on him or any of his 

 backers, and they were paid their bets, the Captain regretted ever 

 after that he made this match, the parties being altogether outside his 

 own social standing. 



In December, 1808, he won a nineteen miles match against Baxter, 

 the Duke of Gordon's celebrated runner, from Gordon Castle to 

 Huntly Lodge. He ran the first nine miles in oOmin., and the whole 



