Had Mr. F. Swindell chosen to take pen in hand in order to narrate his experiences of racing, and to indite notices of the turf men with whom he had business or other relations, he might have produced a book of more than ordinary interest. Although six years have elapsed since the death of this "Napoleon of the turf," as he was called by some of his admirers, his memory is kept green in racing circles by frequent references to his achievements in connection with many of the turf transactions of his day. As Mr. Swindell had moved in sporting circles for a period of half a century, evidence of his sayings and doings is by no means scarce. In his time he had a finger in many pies, and as he left personal estate at the date of his death to the value of over £140,000, it may be taken for granted that the transactions he managed or took part in were somewhat profitable. In his earlier days Mr. Swindell, as he used often enough to tell in his own racy way and in good honest "Lancashire lingo," experienced a good deal of rough weather. "It's a pretty bad case, lad, when thou wants a shilling and doesn't know where to look for it." Frederick Swindell was born in the town of Derby, and learned his father's craft of bell-hanging, by which he made a living for some time in Manchester, in which city he speedily acquired a taste for cock-fighting and other sports, particularly horse-racing, by which in after years he was destined to court fortune both as bookmaker and commissioner, and also as an owner of horses on his own account. It was chiefly in his early Manchester days that he came "through the hard," as he designated his then condition, and felt the lack of money so much; like many other turf adventurers in their beginning, he was poor one day and rich another; "just as luck fell, lad." On one occasion he became bankrupt over a cock-fight at Liverpool--so impoverished, in fact, as to be left without a coin to pay for either supper or bed, and with the certainty that no breakfast would await him in the morning; but next day he was rolling in what, in the circumstances, may be called riches. Having previously backed a horse to win him a hundred pounds--the animal was Charles XII., which, in winning the Liverpool Cup, won for Swindell the amount named--he enjoyed his first taste of fortune in what he then "thowt big money." A different fate befell him on one occasion at Newcastle-on-Tyne while looking on the race for the Northumberland Plate. For that race he had made two wrong moves which told heavily against his pocket; he laid to lose a good "bit of brass" over the horse that won, thinking it a "stiff one," and also backed one that, as it appeared in the sequel, had no pretensions to win; "and lads," he used to say, in telling the story, "a fellow that was on the winning nag and were standing at my back, smashed in my hat. Oh, it were cruel, but that chap had backed the winner."