Whispers of occasional frauds in connection with the Garter of the Turf have, however, been heard, and every now and again it has been held "as curious, to say the least of it, that fillies which ran badly in the One Thousand Guineas should alter their form so much in the Oaks," and vice versâ. Once or twice ugly tales have been told about owners who were "open to conviction"; in particular, it was said a few years ago, regarding a gentleman who "stood" to win, and did win, a very large stake over a horse which he had entered for the Derby, that in order to make sure of his being paid his winnings over that race, he would "require" (so he was told by his commissioner, if we may credit the story) to give up his chance of winning the Oaks, which race seemed to be as like a gift to him as the race for the Blue Ribbon proved to be. "Well," said an experienced racing man, "the story may be quite true; one never can tell exactly how the undercurrents of the turf are running, but you may be quite sure of one thing, and that is, that no one connected with the little arrangement would ever open his mouth about it to an outsider. Such doings can, at the best, be only a matter of guess work, and, on the principle that a man may do as he likes with his own, it is nobody's business."
That is one way of putting the case, and that "a man's horse is his own and he can do with it as he pleases," has often figured as an excuse for very flagrant instances of turf immorality; but, it has been suggested that the Oaks has been less marked by chicanery than other races.
III. THE DERBY.
One hundred and ten years have elapsed since Diomed won the first race for what has since been called the "Blue Ribbon of the Turf," and to-day the Derby is as much in favour as it has been in any previous year. Countless thousands assemble on Epsom Downs to witness each recurring anniversary. During the first thirty years of its existence the race was of slow growth so far as the subscribers and the number of horses running was concerned, but its popularity was soon to grow, and considering the difficulties of locomotion on bad roads and other obstructions, the attendance on the Downs on the day set for the great struggle became very considerable, although nothing like what it was destined to become when railways had made travelling easy and inexpensive.
It was propounded as a question in the columns of one of the sporting journals some years ago that it would be interesting to know how many men were alive who had seen the race run about the year 1820, or even a year or two later; but I do not know if any, or how many answers were returned. In Bluegown's year, however, I conversed at a wayside tavern with an old man who was making his way to Epsom Downs on foot, who had, as a child, seen Eleanor win the Derby of 1801. Among the horse-racing men of Yorkshire there are three or four reputed to be alive who have witnessed more than fifty consecutive races for the St. Leger, and there may, perhaps, be people yet living who have as many times witnessed the struggle for the Derby. Curiously enough, when I ventured in my history of the "Blue Ribbon of the Turf" to renew this question, which is, I think, neither frivolous nor devoid of interest, I was "heavily sneered at" by one of the cocksure critics of the period who thought the matter unworthy of consideration.
The race at the date of Eleanor's victory was twenty-two years old, having been instituted in 1780. During the first ten years of the Derby the accumulated stakes amounted to 11,005 gs. When the race was inaugurated the number of subscribers was thirty-six, and the following is a list of the horses which formed the field: Sir Charles Bunbury's Diomed, Major O'Kelly's Bowdrow, Mr. Walker's Spitfire, Sir F. Evelyn's Wotton, Mr. Panton's colt by Herod, Duke of Cumberland's colt by Eclipse, Mr. Dulsh's colt by Cardinal Puff, Mr. Delme's colt by Gimcrack, and the Duke of Bolton's Bay Bolton.
As regards the number of subscriptions to the race in its earlier days, it may be here recorded that up to and including 1800 the following figures denote the entries: 36, 35, 35, 34, 30, 29, 29, 33, 30, 30, 32, 32, 32, 50, 49, 45, 45, 37, 37, 33, and 33, respectively.
Nothing of much interest can be written regarding the earlier years of the Derby. As is well known to persons versed in the history of the turf, the race was instituted by, or at any rate was named after the twelfth Earl of Derby, who was also, as has been already mentioned, sponsor for the Oaks. Could the future celebrity of the great event have been foreseen, we should not be without full particulars of the earlier struggles for victory; but a hundred years ago the sporting reporter was evidently not of much account; at any rate, the newspapers of the time (1780 to 1800) do little more than record that the race was run. Brief comments began to be offered upon the Derby in 1802 and following years; these, however, were exceedingly curt, consisting usually of such observations as "Won easy," or "Won very easy." The race of 1805, won by Lord Egremont's Cardinal Beaufort, was commented on in the following fashion: "Won by a neck. There was much betting on this race. Mr. Best's colt was thrown down by some horsemen imprudently crossing the course before all the race-horses had passed, and his rider, B. Norton, was bruised by the fall." In the following year, 1806, when Lord Foley's Paris won the Derby, we obtain a better account of the race: "At half-past one they started, and went at a good speed to Tattenham Corner, on which it was observed that Shepherd, who rode Paris, rather pulled, whilst Trafalgar was making play; notwithstanding, Lord Egremont was backed to win. Upon coming to the distance point, Trafalgar ran neck and neck, in which situation they continued till within a few yards of the winning-post, when Shepherd made a desperate push and won the race by about half a head."
In 1813, when Sir Charles Bunbury's Smolensko was declared the winner, having beaten eleven opponents, there were, as in the three succeeding years, 51 entries for the Derby, a number, however, which pretty soon began to be exceeded. In 1827, the year in which Lord Jersey's Mameluke landed the prize from twenty-two competitors, 89 horses had been entered for the race, the same number curiously enough being set forth in the three succeeding years. In 1831 (Spaniel's year) the 100 had been topped, and the fields of runners, as was to be expected, had also considerably increased. In Priam's year, for instance (1830), 28 horses were found at the starting-post. That number was not, however, maintained; but from that year to 1841, 23, 22, 25, 23, 14, 21, 17, 23, 21, 17, and 19, respectively, faced the starter, while in 1851 the field of competitors numbered 33 animals. As a corollary of the big entries and increasing fields, the money to be run for increased so that the stakes became of importance and worth winning, especially in 1848, when the number of horses entered for the race had reached the handsome total of 215 different animals, a number which in after years was occasionally exceeded, as for instance in 1879, when Sir Bevys was hailed as victor, the horses entered for that year's Blue Ribbon numbered no less than 278. Since then the largest entries have occurred in 1880 (257) and 1890 (233), when Bend Or and Sainfoin won respectively.
The terms on which the Derby was first run for were 50 gs. for each horse taking part in the race, non-starters paying half that amount; the distance run during the first three years was one mile, and the weights carried were respectively 8 st. for colts, and 7 st. 11 lb. for fillies; the weights were altered in the year 1784, and again in the years 1801, 1803, 1807, as also in 1865.