93 THE BLUE RIBBON OF THE TURF. 



backing this horse for the owner,' said a betting man 

 to a bookmaker. * And I am laying it for the jockey,' 

 was the reply; 'he says it has no chance to win, and 

 when he says that I know what I am doing.' After 

 all, what matters, the paying of £1,000 to a jockey by 

 the owner of a horse who in the event of its winning 

 the race will pocket fifty times the amount ? If a 

 bookmaker has laid against a horse to lose £12,000 

 or £15,000, it would be a grand bargain if he could, to 

 a dead certainty, prevent it from winning by paying a 

 large sum to its trainer or jockey to disable it. Such 

 ' arrangements ' have been made more than once, and 

 in these and similar considerations, which will easily 

 suggest themselves to the intelligent reader, must be 

 sought an answer to the question, why a jockey should 

 be well paid. 



The economy of the turf and the discipline of the 

 racing-stable is nowadays greatly different from what 

 it was in the time of Holman, who described his ex- 

 periences of Newmarket. There are probably ten 

 times the number of boys in the racing-stables that 

 there was in his day. There are, certainly, it may be 

 assumed, ten times the number of running horses, and 

 it may be taken for granted that there will be, as a 

 rule, a boy for each horse, to attend it in the stable 

 and ride it at exercise. It is from these boys that the 

 f.iture jockeys spring. They are watched by their 

 m isters, and good riders among them are noted, 

 a:id gradually entrusted with work ; taught to ride 

 in trials, and by-and-by entrusted with a 'mount' 

 in public, when thought fit for such a position of 

 trust. Boys, of course, will be boys, and sad pranks 



