40 The Life of Fred Archer 
then, you can see, though he was getting an old man when 
that was taken. 
" Father made a good deal of money for some years, but as 
he began to get too heavy for riding, and he had never managed 
to save any money, he began at one time to get rather ' under the 
weather.' He and mother both had comfortable homes 
when they were young, and hadn't had to save and screw, and 
they didn't take comfortably to it now. People used to say 
that such a well-known jockey as father should have let Bell's 
Life, or one of the other sporting papers, raise a subscription 
for him, but he always stoutly refused. Plenty of more 
important people than himself had done it, but he never would, 
though we didn't like being poor, and often thought he might 
just as well. My sister was older than I when the bad times 
came, and so managed to get more education. But I had to 
be taken away from school when I was only eleven, and there 
was very little money for anything just as we were all growing 
up and needed it. 
" I remember Mr. and Mrs. Fothergill Rowlands very well. 
He was a very handsome man and she a most charming and 
fascinating woman. She had been married before, and had 
grown-up daughters but only the one little boy, and I shouldn't 
have thought he could remember so very much. He seemed 
so much younger than I, and was always about with a nurse, 
and yet I don't think there can be so much difference in our 
ages." 
Another old Prestbury resident who remembered Mr. 
Raleigh as a child described him as " a sweet little boy" — to his 
great delight. 
William Archer gave up riding about 1862, his last mount 
being at Beckford on Black Dwarf, the property of Mr. J. 
Taylor. 
Fred Archer was for a time at a Mr. Cox's school in Chelten- 
ham, and afterwards at Hygeia House, a well-known school 
opposite to the King's Arms. It was kept by a Mr. Vliemann, 
