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In the past, there was no minimum weight in h’caps, so I think you’ll find that there was a jockey who won the Cambridgeshire or Cesarewitch in the mid-19th century weighing 4 stone something.
Gerald
A jockey named Kitchener rode the winner of the 1844 Chester Cup at a weight of 56 pounds (4st), which could be the example you were thinking of. His body weight was reported as 48lbs, just 3st 6lbs!
According to one source it was possible Kitchener’s mount Red Deer wasn’t the true winner. There were 42 runners and some said he only went round once instead of twice!
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1296&dat=18970130&id=sj8QAAAAIBAJ&sjid=oo8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=1073,898555
Rob
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robnorth, what a fantastic find. Very interesting. I wonder what age the jockey was ? thats an unbelievable weight
had a flick through the web. From the racing calender 1846 he appears to have been still riding and able to do 6st 6
Hailing from the City of Chester, I grew up listening to handed-down tales of Chester races. While obviously I have no knowledge if true, the story goes that because of jockey Kitchener’s weight or lack of it, he was strapped onto the saddle as precaution against either accidently or deliberately being nudged off his mount, Red Deer during the hurly-burly of the race. The story also goes that jockey Kitchener was so exhausted after finishing the race he couldn’t single-handedly carry the then much heavier than modern-day racing saddle in order to weigh in. Permission from the stewards had to be sought for some trusted person to assist him with the task.
As robnorth suggested there was definitely a strong hint of skullduggery about the 1844 running of the Chester Cup for I came across this particular reference of the race in an Independent on Sunday article
of Wednesday, 5th May, 2004.
The Chester Cup started life in 1685, when the local Mayor and corporation put up a silver trophy to be run for "five times round". Thankfully, the modern jockey has to cope with passing the winning post but thrice. Today’s renewal is the 169th since the two and a quarter mile contest attained more or less its present form in 1824 ("starting at the Castle pole, twice round and ending at the coming-in Chair") and the race’s tapestry is as colourful as that of the track on which it is run. By 1836 it was the biggest betting race in the calendar, with a local paper reporting "upwards of a million of that sterling stuff which keeps the world going round changing hands".
One Cup yarn is worth the retelling. A huge punt was landed in 1844 by the 7-2 favourite, Red Deer, carrying 4st. His rider, the boy Kitchener, weighed 3st 4lb, less than a giant truckle, and was virtually run away with as Red Deer grabbed a flier after four false starts and scorched off to score by 12 lengths. One of the beneficiaries in the coup, with winnings of £100,000, was Lord George Bentinck, manager to the winning owner, the Duke of Richmond. Bentinck had taken a day off from the Turf reforming duties for which he was famous. He was the Chester starter.
The very last sentence of “He was the Chester starter” certainly asks more questions than it answers.
It was also told to me that during the era when jockey Kitchener and Red Deer were winning the Chester Cup, like Windsor on the River Thames, it was possible to arrive and leave Chester’s Roodee course proper by means of small boat. Unscrupulous bookmakers would sometimes hire such boats in order to facilitate a rapid getaway should they not wish or be able to payout on later races. Mind you a fleeing bookmaker had to be quick because if spotted leaving before the final race of the day was run a hue and cry would be raised by way of alert. With the result that many a bookmaker, minus his belongings, would indeed leave Chester racecourse by means of the nearby River Dee but not necessarily by boat, being that he would be required to either swim or drown.
Which tends to somewhat lend weight to the then occurring practice by distressed racecourse bookmakers of absconding across the Welsh border in order to avoid meeting incurred obligations to English creditors. Being that the Chester section of the River Dee is a natural dividing line between that part of England and Wales. Although, some would claim that while certainly originating from such dishonorable racecourse practices, the derogatory term ‘to welch / welsh on a bet’ also has its roots in the long forgotten English nursery rhyme “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief; Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.”
Exactly which is the most accurate explanation about the origins of the ‘to welch / welsh on a bet’ expression has long been lost in the linguistic mists of time. For arguably there are elements of plausibility in both versions when one knows how historically fond the racecourse betting fraternity were when it came to adopting slang as a means of terminology, some of which still remains in fairly common usage to this day.
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