He started on Saturday morning, November 21, precisely at six o'clock, with the wind very much in his favour, and the odds about two to one against him. Notwithstanding the early hour, the singularity of the match brought together a numerous assemblage. The hoop used by Captain Bennet on the occasion was heavier than those trundled by boys in general, and was selected by him conformably to the terms of the wager. The first ten miles Captain Bennet performed in one hour and twenty minutes, which changed the odds considerably in his favour.
He accomplished the whole distance considerably within the given time, as the Ongar coachman met him only five miles and a half from Ongar, when he had a full hour in hand.
A cruel wager was the following, made in December of the same year, when a Mr. Arnold, a sporting man who resided at Pentonville, bet Mr. Mawbey, a factor of the Fulham Road, twenty guineas that the former did not produce a dog, which should be thrown over Westminster Bridge at dark, and find its way home again in six hours, as proposed by Arnold. The inhuman experiment was tried in the evening, when a spaniel bitch, the property of a groom in Tottenham Court Road, was produced and thrown over from the centre of the bridge. The dog arrived at the house of her master in two hours after the experiment had been made.
Little consideration was shown for animals in those days.
On a Saturday evening in August 1808, a crowd of people assembled at Hyde Park Corner to watch the start of a pony which was, for a stake of five hundred guineas, matched to start with the Exeter Mail and be in Exeter first, with or without a rider. A man leading the pony was at liberty to take a fresh post-horse whenever he liked. The backer of the pony won the match, for though the odds were against it, the game little animal arrived at Exeter in very good condition, forty-five minutes before the Mail reached that city. Several thousands of pounds were wagered on the result.
It should be added that the pony drank ale during the journey, and several pints of port in addition.
The distance from London to Exeter is about one hundred and seventy-four miles.
In 1809 a very extraordinary wager was decided upon the road between Cambridge and Huntingdon. A gentleman of the former place had betted a considerable sum of money that he would go, a yard from the ground, upon stilts, the distance of twelve miles, within the space of four hours and a half: no stoppage was to be allowed, except merely the time taken up in exchanging one pair of stilts for another, and even then his feet were not to touch the ground. He started at the second milestone from Cambridge in the Huntingdon Road, to go six miles out and six miles in; the first he performed in one hour and fifty minutes, and did the distance back in two hours and three minutes, so that he went the whole in three hours and fifty-three minutes, having thirty-seven minutes to spare within the time allowed him.
In the winter of 1810-1811 a bet of £500 was made by the Duke of Richmond, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, with Sir Edward Crofton (who afterwards committed suicide), that the latter should not produce a horse who would leap, in fair Irish sporting style (which allows just touching with the hind feet), a wall seven feet high. Sir Edward brought forward a cocktail horse, called Turnip, being got by Turnip, a thoroughbred son of old Pot8o's (a horse imported, like the celebrated Diamond, into Ireland by Colonel Hyde), out of a common Irish mare.