82 The Life of Fred Archer 
owner, Mr. Radcliff, was a pleasant, cheery man, whose fallen 
fortunes were for a time retrieved by his Cesarewitch victory, 
for prior to this he had gambled freely and lost heavily. It 
is said that the result of the Cesarewitch made him more 
reckless, and he was a big loser when Salvanos was badly 
beaten in the Cambridgeshire. 
Archer's apprenticeship finished at the Christmas of 1872, 
and Dawson presented him with a gold watch inscribed : 
" For good conduct. — Mathew Dawson." With all the tempta- 
tions which beset him, and which few could have withstood. 
Archer was always steady, and, showing his watch to a friend, 
he said : "I value this more than anything I have, and shall 
keep it as long as I live." 
Although his successes up to this time had been very 
limited, yet they seem to have been won with great style and 
with cleverness. 
Archer stepped into Webb's shoes as the stable lightweight, 
but it was the death of poor Tom French that gave him his 
great opportunity and the first real step in his future greatness. 
A more exemplary, well-conducted jockey than Tom French 
never lived, and he was a brilliant horseman. To one like 
Archer, so quick to learn, it must have been a great advantage 
to have such a man as French for a senior. The latter's 
death occurred in the summer of 1873, from consumption 
brought about by over-wasting. Next to Archer, who stood 5 ft. 
8^ in. in his stockings, French was perhaps the tallest jockey 
ever seen. 
Looking back to this past time, we cannot fail to notice 
a strange similarity in the closing scenes in the lives of these 
two famous horsemen. They both died at the same age — 
twenty-nine ; both were identified with the same stable and 
were devotedly attached to its interests; both loved their 
profession and sacrificed themselves for it ; both succumbed, 
in one form or another, to the trying effects of wasting. Alike, 
too, in physique, they resembled each other in style, the 
