Ask a Yorkshireman how far it is to any place along the road, and he will most likely answer you, so many miles “and a way-bit.” This is probably his pronunciation of “wee bit.” It is often said that the “way-bit” is generally as long as the rest put together. This expression compares with the Scottish so many miles “and a bittock.”
XXXIV
From Rossington Bridge, a long pale rise, bordered by coppices of hazels and silver birches, leads past Cantley to Tophall, where one of the old road wagons was struck by lightning on the 22nd of May 1800. One of the seven horses drawing the wagon was killed, and four others were stunned; while the great lumbering conveyance and its load of woollen cloths, muslins, cottons, rabbit-down and a piano were almost entirely burnt. The disaster was a long-remembered event for miles round, and one of the Doncaster inns was renamed from it, the “Burning Waggon.” This house has long since been renamed the “Ship.”
Passing Tophall, and by a bridge over the railway cutting, Doncaster is seen, with its great church-tower, smoking chimney-stalks, and puffing locomotives, map-like, down below, three miles away. Two miles further, past Hawbush, or Lousybush, Green, on which unaristocratically named spot old-time tramps used to congregate, Doncaster racecourse is reached, on the old Town Moor.
Doncaster, all England over, stands for racing and the St. Leger, just as much as Epsom for the Derby, and racing has been in progress here certainly ever since 1600, and perhaps even before. The renowned St. Leger, which still draws its hundreds of thousands every September, was established in 1778 and named by the Marquis of Rockingham after Lieut.-Colonel Ashby St. Leger. All Yorkshire, and a large proportion of other shires, flocks to witness this classic race, greatly to the benefit of the town, which owns the racecourse and derives the handsome income of some £30,000 per annum from it. Doncaster, indeed, does exceedingly well out of racing, and the Town Council can well afford the £380 annually expended in stakes. But the St. Leger week is a terrible time for quiet folks, for all the brazen-throated blackguards of the Three Kingdoms are then let loose upon the town, and not even this sum of £30,000 in relief of the rates quite repays them for the infliction.
Robert Ridsdale, originally “Boots” at a Doncaster inn, rose to be owner of Merton Hall, about 1830. He was a bookmaker. Betting is a pursuit in which only the bookmakers secure the fortunes.
Dickens, who was here during the St. Leger week in 1857, in company with Wilkie Collins, and stayed at the still extant “Angel,” saw this side of horse-racing fully displayed. Looking down into the High Street from their window, the friends saw “a gathering of blackguards from all parts of the racing earth. Every bad face that had ever caught wickedness from an innocent horse had its representation in the streets,” and the next day after the great race every chemist’s shop in the town was full of penitent bacchanalians of the night before, roaring to the busy dispensers to “Give us soom sal-volatile or soom damned thing o’ that soort, in wather—my head’s bad!” Night was made hideous for all who sojourned at the “Angel” by the “groaning phantom” that lay in the doorway of one of the bedrooms and howled until the morning, like a lost soul; explanation by the landlord in the morning eliciting the fact that the fearsome sounds were caused by a gentleman who had lost £1,500 or £2,000 by backing a “wrong ’un,” and had accordingly drank himself into a delirium tremens.
Sir William Maxwell of Menreith, who won the St. Leger with Filho da Puta, in 1815, celebrated his success by thrusting his walking-stick through all the pier-glasses at the “Reindeer”; expressing his regret that there were no more to smash, as an adequate relief to his feelings.
Dean Pigou, once vicar of Doncaster, bears later testimony to the character of a large proportion of the race-crowds, and tells amusingly how the contingents of pickpockets who flock here on these occasions disguise themselves as clergymen, a fact well known to the police, and resulting in the arrest of a genuine cleric on one occasion. “You old rascal!” said the constable; “we’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
Doncaster, out of the season, is a singularly quiet and inoffensive town, and looks as innocent as its native butterscotch. Quiet, because the locomotive and carriage-works of the Great Northern Railway are a little way outside; inoffensive, because it is unpretending. At the same time it is just as singularly devoid of interest. Almost its oldest houses are those on Hall Cross Hill, as the traveller passes the elm-avenue by the racecourse and enters the town from the direction of London; and they are scarce older than the days of the Prince Regent. Very like the older part of Brighton, this southern end of Doncaster is the best the town has to show.