The goings-on at Brighton, both on the course and in the town, have reached such a pitch that we have discontinued sending a representative to report the racing. Sad to tell, almost as much justification for such a course exists in connection with Goodwood. This has been the happy hunting-ground of the thief for very many years, but we doubt if matters ever reached the pitch they did this year, the gangs of pickpockets working with such impunity that an inoffensive visitor was bludgeoned on the head actually in the very entrance to Tattersall’s ring. Small wonder, then, when an act like this can be fearlessly perpetrated at an aristocratic gathering like Goodwood, that it should be repeated elsewhere. Here is an extract from one of the letters which appeared at the time:— Words fail to convey any idea of the ruffianism, robbers, and welshing which took place at the so-called Grand Stand at Alexandra Park on Saturday last. There were from two to three hundred organised professional welshers, thieves, and bullies, with few exceptions well known to the officials and police and even to an occasional race-goer like myself. Woe to the unfortunate individual who insisted on the payment of a bet—a split skull dealt from behind, a scuffle, and robbery. I have no hesitation in saying that the life of every man and woman in that enclosure was absolutely at the mercy of this organised and desperate gang, and a feeling of fear paralysed the stoutest of us. There were scores of such public communications. One racing correspondent of a large provincial paper stated that he should never think of going to the course without a revolver in his pocket. Of course the so-called sporting and publicans’ papers tried to make out that these letters were not genuine, or were exaggerated, but without exception they bear on their face evidence of their reality. The writer of these lines, however, ascertained the fact of their genuineness from the editor who published them in one of the largest and oldest of our daily newspapers, which has been by no means otherwise conspicuous in this phase of social reform. We may be allowed to quote the following reflections, which witness to the existence of this ruffianly condition of the Turf, from Mr. George Gissing’s _Private Papers of Henry Rycroft_ (1903), pp. 43-44:— To-day’s newspaper contains a yard or so of reading about a spring horse-race. The sight of it fills me with loathing. It brings to my mind that placard I saw at a station in Surrey a year or two ago, advertising certain races in the neighbourhood. Here is the poster as I copied it into my notebook:—