Trainers and Jockeys, 3 7 



spiring visage, along the DuUingham-road, and boiling 

 himself by ounces to 8st. 2lb, for an Ascot Cup mount. 

 Poor Frank Butler did not look one whit more happy 

 on these occasions, and wasting even to 8st. /lbs. was 

 the very curse of the latter ten years of his jockey life, 

 though out of compliment to Scott and Songstress he 

 drew 8st. 4lbs. at the last Ascot Meeting he ever 

 attended. The weather is most favourable, and as 

 time also hangs rather heavily on their hands in those 

 Berkshire villages, jockeys ride their very lowest 

 weights at Ascot, and look like him, as if they had 

 been quite determined " to take off their flesh and sit 

 in their bones." William Scott during his last mile 

 up the North-road elm avenue on a St. Leger morn- 

 ing, with a sprig of heather he had gathered near 

 Rossington Bridge jauntily stuck in his wide-awake, 

 and his merry joke and nod to his friends as he swung 

 past them to his lodgings on the Hall Cross Hill, 

 where, on the last occasion. Parson Dennis was in 

 attendance to " valet him," invested this species of fire- 

 torture with a much more pleasant hue. Jacques tried 

 himself more heavily in this respect than any man we 

 ever met with ; as, after leaving the profession for 

 some years, and growing corpulent as a licensed 

 victualler, he resumed the sweaters, and wasted him- 

 self down to a ghastly /st. 31b. shadow, in order to 

 don the white and blue for his old master. Colonel 

 Cradock, when " Sim" could not ride the weight. 

 George Nelson did not ride for some years before his 

 death, but lived on his Royal pension, and commanded 

 " The Fleet" of roysterers in Tickhill. Stephenson and 

 Dockeray made themselves into walking skeletons, till 

 increasing weight obliged them to leave the saddle ; 

 and so did Heseltine, Holmes, and George Francis, 

 the latter of whom used to waste to half-ounces. 

 Wells, in 1853, fainted on a Malton race morning 

 when trying to get down to 5st. 5 lbs., while Job Mar- 

 son (who, like poor Bill Scott, always would have the 



