People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1893 — CONVEYING RACE HORSES. [ARTICLE]

CONVEYING RACE HORSES.

One of the Inventions of the Stage-Coach Period. It is difficult for owners and trainers of the present day, when a valuable horse, trained to the hour, can be sent anywhere to meet an engagement within twenty-four hours, to appreciate the difficulties felt by their predecessors before railways were introduced. In those days horses were marched over the country at the rate of ten miles a day, and a winner of the Oaks in 1836 was dispatched at once from Epsom to take part in the Newcastle Plate, with a full month spent on the journey. Lord George Bentinck’s enterprise devised a plan by which race horses were placed in a van, a sort of traveling stable, and taken by post-horses all over the kingdom.

The first occasion on which this new machine was employed was when Elis was sent from Goodwood to take part in the St. Leger in 1836, when the horse had been left temporarily in charge of Jonn Kent's father. His successes at Goodwood and Lewes had induced Lord George to back him heavily for the Leger; but just before the race he found that some parties were helping themselves largely on his horse, and he made it known that unless his commissioner was accommodated with a bet of twelve thousand pounds to one thousand pounds he would not start him. This bet was laid, as John Kent suggests, because it was believed at that period to be impossible to get Elis to Doncaster in time for the race. However, Lord George’s newly-in-vented van was brought iDto requisition,, and on the Friday before the race was started, laden by Elis and his schoolmaster, the Drummer. The distance of two hundred and fifty miles was divided into three sections of about eighty miles each, an'd on Sunday morning the two horses were galloped on the Lichfield racecourse. On the Monday evening Elis was safely stabled in Doncaster, the cost of the journey having been about one hundred pounds. On the Wednesday he won the Leger, and Lord George was well repaid for this expenditure. When he finally joined the Goodwood stable, Lord George had six such vans employed by John Kent and his father, and doubtless this invention had much to do with the success of his stable.—Academy.