A Mirror of the Turf; Or, The Machinery of Horse-Racing Revealed, Showing the Sport of Kings as It Is To-DayBertram, James Glass
History
A Mirror of the Turf; Or, The Machinery of Horse-Racing Revealed, Showing the Sport of Kings as It Is To-Day
Bertram, James Glass
Horse racing -- Great Britain
With respect to the amounts of money run for, some reforms have already
been established, and it may prove that by lessening the number
of races and doubling the stakes, some three-day meetings may be
advantageously compressed into two days, which would be a gain to all
concerned, except, perhaps, the bookmakers, for there is occasionally
more betting over a small stake than there is upon one of three times
the amount where the competing horses are, it may be, of a higher
class. Another phase of racing economy may be here alluded to, and
that is the propriety of peremptorily limiting the sport, so that
it may not occupy more than four days of the week. There is not now
any Saturday racing at Newmarket, and it would be well if none were
permitted elsewhere; there should also be, as a general rule, no racing
on Mondays. The tendency of late has been to increase the number of
Saturday meetings, and in all likelihood ere many years are past we
may have in England racing on Sundays! When it is considered that many
seats of sport are far distant from Newmarket, from whence a large
number of the competitors are brought, it is early enough to begin
racing on the Tuesday, and Saturday should be left a clear day for
going home.
The comfort of all engaged in the business of the turf would be greatly
enhanced were the racing limited to four days; even the bookmakers, it
is believed, would be glad to acquiesce in such an arrangement.
As is well known, the death of the nominator of a horse for a race
renders the nomination void--a hard case in some instances, but for
which no remedy has yet been devised. Much controversy has been
expended from time to time on this feature of turf economy, and in
all probability a solution of the various problems involved when the
death of a nominator takes place may some day be arrived at, when the
proposal of "deposit your nomination money" may after all be found to
be the best way out of the difficulty. With the payment of such large
sums of ready money as would be involved, there would undoubtedly
be a considerable falling off in the entries of certain classes of
races--which many turf men think would prove an advantage.
Other disturbing matters which require to be dealt with by the Jockey
Club are as pressing as these which have just been noticed. The "rough"
and "welshing" element was never so rampant on some of our racecourses
as it is at present, and the turf of late, even at Newmarket, has been
invaded by brigades of blackguards, who, by means of the numerous lines
of railways, find easy access to scenes from which they were excluded
in former years by distance and cost of transport. The presence
of numberless bands of insolent roughs, some of them in intimate
confederacy, it is said, with the lower class of bookmakers, has not
tended to the elevation of horse-racing, nor does it add to the good
name of its votaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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