view raw text
FAMOUS BOOKMAKERS I . i Two Obscure Illiterates Who Rose From Penury to Affluence. J S How Hill Obtained His First Stake J Enormous Transactions of Davis. ii in ii in Writing of two of the big-gun eookmakcrs a of England eighty years ago, "Thormanby" 1 spins the following interesting yarn in tho n "London Sportsman" : h "I write of the pencilers of a time within a the recollection of many living veterans of v sport And I give first place to Harry Hill. From the humble position of boots at a j Manchester hotel, Hill rose to the highest position on the turf as a commissioner a man who made his 0,000 book regularly on every big event during the year. His t own story of his first slice of luck was the C following: "He attended Doncaster to see the Cup run for one year, and without much trouble . got rid of all his brass except about five shillings, which, though net enough to pay t his fare by coach back -to Manchester, was i j still enough to take him there by more j a humble conveyance, namely, the wagon and j walking. While on shanks pony, by which j he meant to go as far as Thurlstone, he . i missed his road and just after he had crossed t the Dearn river, and on stopping at a j small cottage to inquire his way, noticed a t window in which a square had been stopped up with the manuscript copy of an old bal- lad in order to keep out the draughts, while j the pane next to it had been strengthened 5 by pasting on it a Bank of England note j of the value of 00. "The aged couple to whom the cottage be- longed did not know the value of the piece of paper they had used for so common a j purpose; in fact, they could neither read t nor write, and so Hill had little difficulty in buying the picture found months be- , fore on the high road for half-a-crown. j Again in funds, he, like Whittington, 1 turned back on his footsteps; invested part j of his windfall on the next days events, j was fortunate on that and the other days j as well, and cleared altogether over 00. To his credit, be it said, he repaid the old folks the 00. HILL SOON MADE FORTUNE. j "It was Lord George Bentinck who gave j him the first leg-up which enabled him to make a name and fortune on the turf. Lord George look a liking to the slangy and illiter- j ate ex-boots, and, seeing that he possessed , exceptional shrewdness and business ca- pacity, entrusted Hill with his commissions. From that moment Harrys fortune was : made. His first grand coup was when . Bloomsbury won the Derby in the historical snowstorm of 1S39. Harry made a large : sum by that event, and through a dispute , over the race attracted the attention of Baron Martin, who afterward became one of his fastest friends. But Hill, with that ; shrewd common sence which was the most salient point of his character, always stuck to Lord George, and executed for that famous , statesman some of the largest commissions ever entrusted to an agent, as, for instance, when Miss Elis won tiie Goodwood Cup, Lord George Bentincks claim was 5,000. every penny of which was collected by Hill ; and paid over, whilst, at the same time, he landed a good sum for himself. "At Newmarket, when given the Gaper commission for the Derby, within two hours he got on for his lordship hB25,000, and this sum before many days were over, he increased to 00,000. This brought Gaper to five to 1, and so anxious was Lord George to win that he was heard to say, Egad. Id feed Gaper on gold from henceforth if that would insure his victory. But the Napoleon of the turf was destined never to achieve the great ambition of his life, beside which all the prizes of the world Avere valueless in his eyes, the Blue Riband of the turf. Gaper came in fourth, but his owners pecuniary losses were not heavy, as by John Scotts persuasion he had hedged his money, and won 5,000 on Cotherstone, the winner. "Though Hill managed in one way or another to accumulate a colossal fortune, he never aped the swell; though he kept a fine house he never desired to be a country gentleman, like Gully; a town magnifico, like Padwick or Swindell, who, however, were money lenders first and bookmakers afterward. He was rather of the Jem Blaud order, especially in his love for low company. No amount of money or intercourse with good-class men could wean him from the tastes of his early days the inn-yard and the tap-room; and he was never so much at home as when, attired in his invariable suit of ill-fitting, rusty black, which looked as if it had been made for his grandfather, his grimy, hard-looking face lit up with a grin, he presided at the head of a table, surrounded by ostlers, jockeys and the nondescripts of the turf, from which he himself had sprung. Here he was king; everybody roared at his queer stories, and the louder they roarea the more drinks he 1 stood. Most of his evenings, especially aftor he had retired from bookmaking, were spent ; at the Coach and Horses in Dover Street, Piccadilly. He died a wretched, blind old man, in 1SS0, and left no will. The only property he was known to be possessed of : was Aekworth Park, which he had purchased from Gully. What became of all the ! rest of his wealth remains, I believe, to this 1 day a mystery. INTRODUCTION OF BETTING LISTS. "Another famous bookmaker of the highest type was Leviathan Davis. Like most ; other famous betting men. Davis was a self-made man. He began life as a carpenter and joiner in the employ of Messrs. Cubbitt : and Co., the well-known contractor. It was as a backer that he made his first great ; coup. He stood Sir Tatton Sykes for the Two Thousand Guineas of 184G and won 1 such a pot of money that he was able to give up carpentering and set up regularly r in business as a professional betting man. . As Davis customers became more and more ; numerous he was pestered out of his life ; by the endless string of questions he was 5 I i J S J ii in ii in a 1 n h a v j t C . t j a j i t j t j 5 j j t , j j j j j j , : . : , ; , ; 1 ; ! 1 ; : ; 1 r . ; ; 5 constantly called upon to answer as to the r prices of individual horses in tho betting . market. This interfered greatly with the booking of the bets, and at last a happy thought suggested itself by which he might j save himself the trouble of answering queries and devote himself entirely to doing business. He would have all the prices written out, tabulated, and hung up where every one could consult them. This was the origin of the famous betting lists which were in vogue in London until the Ace or 1853 suppressed them. t "The first of these lists of Davis was a hung in the Durham Arms, Serle Street, i, Lincolns Inn Fields, and so enormous was o of the trade which it brought to the house that v a few years the buxom landlady retired c possession of a very handsome fortune. s The second list was posted at Barrs, in Long Acre, and there Davis and his clerks a might have been seen standing behind big c bankers ledgers entering the bets as fast v as their pens could go. So safe and sound was Davis by this time that one of his winning tickets was always considered ev- s a erywhere as negotiable as a Bank of Eng- , land note. j UNLUCKY ON DERBY AND OAKS. "Strange to say, Davis was singularly c unlucky in his books on the Derby and Oaks, though on the first-named he some- t times made one as high as 0,000. His 1 first heavy hit is said to have been for 0,- f 000 over The Cur for the Cesarewitch ; but it was with the Derby hat his worst re- i verses were associated. He was 50,000 to the bad over The Flying Dutchman, and he c had three terrible years running 1S49, 1S50 t and 1S51. Probably a million dollars would hardly have covered his losses on the Epsom t victories of Voltigeur, Daniel OBourke ana Teddington. Perhaps the worst blow of the l three was the triumph of Sir Joseph Haw- i leys horse. It was, as Argus said at the time, a blow that struck him between wind and water. But he took no more notice of it than he was wont to do of his washing t bill, although his losses were estimated at 1 00,000, paying them with as much indif- 1 ference as the London and Westminster ; Bank would have done. Amongst others to whom he had lost large sums was Mr. Charles Greville, whose posthumous Me- 1 moirs are the most famous chronique scan- 1 daieuse of our time, and Mr. Greville was 1 somewhat surprised, and perhaps a good deal t more rejoiced, to reecive on the morning of i the Oaks a check for 5,000 from Mr. ! Davis. It was a judicious act of promptitude, for it at once put an end to all sus- i pense on the part of those who were looking ; forward with some nervousness to settling i day, and it stamped Davis as a very mine ; of Peru. "But he had his revenge in the autumn, i when Mrs. Taft and Truth amply recouped him for his summer losses, the two of them probably bringing him in 50,000. After his winter Derby deposits came in he was i supposed to have entered on his 1S52 cam- l paign with 50,000 at the London and West- 1 minster Bank, the heads of which establish- ! ment, it is said, would rise to accommodate him at any hour of the night That statement, however, must, I think, be taken with j a grain of salt At this point of his career j Davis fairly deserved his title of Leviathan, for he conducted his business on a scale never known before. He resembled, in fact, Captain OKelly in his zenith, who, 1 when he was asked, after taking a heavy bet, where his estates lay, responded, By the powers, I hev the map o them about me," and produced a perfect roll of bank notes; , or the old miser near Doncaster, who went to a great land sale in his filthy rags and a , hay band around his waist, and astonished the auctioneer, who wonderer where the deposit was to come from, by holding up a 00,000 bank note one of the few ever made, and saying, Heres the cock ; Ive got the old hen at home. Henceforward the tide of ill luck always flowed steadily against him at Epsom. Daniel ORourke is said to have cost him 0,000, Catherine Hayes cost him about the same, and West Australian 40,000, of which 50,000 went in a check to Mr. Uowes. LUCKY ON THE ST. LEGER, "On the St Leger and at post betting the Leviathan was uniformly lucky. He had a great fancy, too, for backing riders, and there his good fortune was amazing. Indeed, at one time, he preferred backing jockeys to backing horses. Fordham, or The Kid, as he always called him, was Davis particular favorite, and so highly did he think both of Georges luck and horsemanship that he often declined to lay against one of The Kids mounts. Like a good many other bookmakers Davis was no great judge of a horse in fact, could hardly teli a good one from a bad one when they were standing still but he had a marvelously keen eye for detecting when they were in trouble, and would keep on betting until they were twenty yards from the post, and if it were a very near thing after they had passed it. "I have never heard of his nerve failing out once, and that was when Bon Mot won the Liverpool Cup. He was just beginning to fire heavily into this strange 5,000 Impostor when he found himself compelled, in consequence of a nervous headache, to close his book and sit down, and, as luck would have it, he won 5,000 instead of losing nearly twice that amount "But the incident was of more serious import than he or anyone else imagined. He had laid heavily against Essedarius fcr the Cup, and the anxiety affected his mind. He entirely lost his head, and became so alarmed lest he should be unable to pay his losses that his health broke down and on the morning of the race he looked the mere wreck of his former self. The victory of the little Irish outsider, Bon Mot, had the effect of a restorative, but Davis knew that he had had a warning, and that the ceaseless anxieties of his business were beginning to tell upon him. He was no longer the man he was when, after Flying Dutchmans Derby, he paid away almost every penny of his capital with the calmness of a stoic. Although he had an iron conti- stitution and the lungs of a Stentor, his strength was unequal to the tremendous and harassing strain which his immense busi- ness threw upon him incessantly, and he had the good sense to lay down his pencil for-; ever at the end of the season of 1S57. On the Friday in the Houghton meeting of that year he retired to private life, taking with him not only the handsome fortune which he had gained by his own skill and energy, but also the respect, esteem and good wishes of all who had ever had any dealings with him."
