It is interesting to see how many of the key names and traditions of modern horse racing date back to the second half of the eighteenth century. Think Jockey Club (founded 1750); think Tattersall’s (bloodstock auctioneers, founded by Richard Tattersall with headquarters off Hyde Park in 1766) ; think thoroughbred stud books (John Weatherby produced the first one in 1791 and it has been maintained ever since by the Weatherby family/company, meticulously recording every thoroughbred birth in England and Ireland). Add to these the fact that the Oaks was first raced in 1779 and the Derby in 1780.

The period also saw the introduction of racing colours, known now as silks, in 1762. Their use was adopted by the Jockey Club with the record as follows:

“For the greater conveniency of distinguishing the horses running, as also for the prevention of disputes
arising from not knowing the colours worn by each rider, the underwritten gentlemen have come to the resolution and agreement of having the colours annexed to the following names, worn by their respective riders: The stewards therefore hope, in the name of the Jockey Club, that the named gentlemen will take care that the riders be provided with dresses accordingly”

Nineteen owners were listed: seven Dukes, one Marquis, four Earls. one Viscount, one Lord, two Baronets, and three commoners.
The Duke of Cumberland chose: “purple”
The Duke of Grafton chose: “sky blue”
The Duke of Devonshire chose: “straw”
The Duke of Northumberland chose: “yellow”
The Duke of Kingston chose “crimson”
The Duke of Ancaster chose: “buff”
The Duke of Bridgewater chose: “garter blue”
The Earl of Waldegrave chose: “deep red”
The Earl of Oxford chose: “purple and white”
The Earl of March chose: “white”
The Earl of Gower chose: “blue”
Viscount Bolingbroke chose: “black”
Lord Grosvenor chose: “orange”
Sir John Moore chose: “darkest green”
Sir James Lowther chose: “orange”
Mr. R. Vernon chose: “white”
The Hon. Mr. Greville chose “brown trimmed with yellow”
Mr. Jenison Shafto chose: “pink”

Sir J Lowther proved indecisive and failed to make his mind up in time…

Originally, a black velvet huntsman’s cap was the only type used by the riders and was more or less associated with the colours listed above, but this gave way to caps varied in colour as we know them today. Of those listed, one family have kept the same set of colours throughout the ensuing two and a half centuries – the Duke of Devonshire with his straw colours.

Both William Douglas (1725-1810) who later became known as ‘Old Q’ once he became the 4th Duke of Queensbury, and the Honourable Richard Vernon of Newmarket chose White. In fact ‘Old Q’ reverted to using his black and red racing colours for an astonishing 57 consecutive years of racing between 1748 and 1805. He was an infamous old roué but a great supporter of Racing and a devoted gambler. No mean amateur jockey himself, on one occasion his chosen jockey informed him that bookmakers were offering him money to throw a race. The Duke advised him to take the money – and then on the day of the race inspected his horse in the parade ring before announcing that it was such a fine horse that he would ride it himself – and promptly removed his great coat to reveal his red and black silks underneath. He won the race.

An all-black strip has been associated with some of the great names of the horse racing world – first with Viscount Bolingbroke. Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke (1732-1787) kept a stable of some twenty racehorses. He owned several famous horses including Gimcrack, who was painted by George Stubbs with the jockey in black colours. He also owned the great racehorse (and later great stud) Highflyer – who was undefeated in fourteen race starts. Highflyer had to be sold during his racing career because Lord Bolingbroke had racked up a huge gambling debt. The purchaser, paying £2,500, was Richard Tattersall, who made at least £15,000 a year out of stud fees for the heroic animal (enough to pay for the building of a fine mansion for Tattersall, appropriately called Highflyer Hall

Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, painted by Stubbs in 1765

The black colours then passed to the Duke of Grafton before being adopted by the 9th Duke of Hamilton (1740 – 1819). Jockeys wearing his famous black silks won seven St Leger wins in the period between 1786 and 1814. A later all-black owner, John Bowes, won the Derby on no fewer than four occasions between 1835 and 1853.

In 1787 the then Lord Derby changed his colours from “green and white stripes” to the famous “black with white cap” which is still used by his successors today. Due to a superstition which followed Lord Derby’s Sansovino win in the 1924 Derby the jacket always has one white button amongst the black.

In 1799 the Grosvenor family dropped the all-orange and adopted “yellow with a black cap” colours which have been used by the Dukes of Westminster ever since.

For many years there was a free-for-all with horse owners choosing all manner of colours and combinations. Finally in 1971 the Jockey Club laid down a list of just 18 permitted colours. This means that in accordance with the rules of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities there are 18 colours, 25 body designs, and 12 sleeve designs. This gives a huge number of permutations (Weatherby’s have over 19,000 combinations registered).Oddly you do not even have to own a horse to own a set of colours – some are bought as an investment – yes, there are people who buy ‘cherished’ colours as an alternative investment particularly if these have a particular historical connection. If any of the original ‘pure’ colours comes up for auction, expect to pay tens of thousands of pounds as with the plain emerald green strip sold in Ireland (for charity) in 1995. For a time these cherished colours were sold “under the counter” and so in 1996 the British Horseracing Board introduced a sale of currently unregistered colours. There were a dozen of them, and the sale fetched just under £130,000 with the highest figure (£28,750 ) going to a plain dark-blue set of silks. That is dwarfed by the £69,000 paid by stable owner John Fretwell for his plain lime-green colours or by the plain pink set bought by Mrs Sue Magnier. Mr Shafto, who had the registration for plain pink back in 1762, would have been amazed (and no, his jockeys didn’t wear silver buckles at their knees – that’s a different Shafto altogether…).

The Battenberg The Chocolatier

The Obama The Traffic Cone

The Cruella de Vil The Lighthouse

Pictures courtesy of the British Horse Racing Authority site at http://www.britishhorseracing.com/goracing/racing/racingcolours/default.asp showing racing silks supplied by Allerton & Co.

Writing in the first week of November 1783 Richard Hall gives a snapshot of what he and his family got up to in their spare time.

On the Tuesday 4th November he "Went with Wife, Daughter (and son Francis who met us later) & Sophy to see Sir Ashton Lever's Collection of Natural Curiosities - and curious they indeed are. Din'd at a Beefstake House. Fine day, mild"

Richard would have been in his element at the museum, also known as the Leverium, and sometimes even as The Holophusicon. Based in Leicester Square the museum opened in 1775 and remained there for over twelve years. Entrance cost half a crown a head and for this visitors could see some 28,000 exhibits (mostly natural history items such as shells, fossils, etc but including various items brought back by Captain James Cook). It is to be hoped that Francis got there in time to share his father's enthusiasm for shells and fossils, and that 'Wife Daughter & Sophy' were not too bored with cabinet after cabinet of exhibits. Good to know that they worked up an appetite and that there was a 'stake house' nearby - a reminder that establishments where hot pies could be bought ('eat in or take-away') are nothing new.

I still have Richard's own collection of fossils and his shells - many of them still meticulously labelled with their Latin names. Richard also kept a little book in which he drew pictures of fossils (here, 'an Ophiomorphite'). Pre-Darwin it was believed that these creatures were in fact long worms, coiled up in death, before being turned to stone. Coming across a dead centipede rolled up in a spiral, I can inderstand the belief.

On the fifth of November there was no mention of Guy Fawkes or bonfires - rather a more serious note of fears over a conflagration which broke out nearby ("Rose early this morning on account of a great fire in Aldersgate Street. Blessed be the Lord who kept me and mine from the like Calamity"). The entry is a reminder that although the Great Fire of London was a century earlier, Richard's home at One London Bridge was only a hundred yards or so from the Monument, marking where the Great Fire started. Fires were a great concern to Richard - his diaries are full of similar reports. No wonder he went out and checked that he had renewed his fire cover with the Bird in Hand Insurance Company, raising the sum assured a short time afterwards...

On the sixth Richard noted that it was fine in the morning and that his son "William returned from his Sussex and Kent journeys, through mercy, in safety".

The entry reflects the fact that the Hall haberdashery business was expanding - rather than simply waiting for clients to come to Town for the season, family members would take it in turns to tour the Home Counties, no doubt armed with swatches and material samples and examples of new fashions, drumming up orders before 'returning to base' to have them made up, ready to be returned at the next visit. Indeed the only reason Richard was up in London was to provide 'cover' at the shop at One London Bridge. He stayed up for the Lord Mayor's Show the week afterwards and then returned to his home in the Cotswolds. It "remained fine, but very cool".

I like Richard's final entry on this page. It looks as though he started to say that he' took tea' before remembering that tea was off the menu, and instead he records that he "drank milk and water with Wife and Daughter at Mrs Reynolds". No explanation is given as to why there was no tea, but my guess is that Richard's digestive system was playing him up and a diet of milk and water was called for. Either that or Mrs Reynolds had committed the faux pas of failing to send the servants out for new supplies of the precious leaves....

(THE ABOVE IS A DUPLICATE OF THE BLOG POSTED AT MY NEW SITE AT http://blog.mikerendell.com  - the new place to go to for witterings, musings and oddments of 18th Century tittle-tattle.)

Ever wondered what was the most popular English card game in the Eighteenth Century? Loo. It was probably a name which was an abbreviation of Lanterloo – a meaningless word which equates to ‘fiddlesticks’. It was a game which developed a bad reputation as a tavern game – one which could be entirely harmless when played as ‘limited’ but one where the stakes could ratchet up incredibly quickly when played ‘unlimited’. Here was a game for the hustler if ever there was!

Gillray´s take on card-playing, albeit Twopenny Whist rather than Loo (picture courtesy of 1st Art Gallery  http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/

There are various alternative forms of the game, some played with three and some with five cards. The three card loo involves three cards being dealt to each player (there could be as many as seventeen or as few as two) after each has put in his or her three counters. A spare hand called ‘the widow’  is placed in front of the banker. Each player then takes in turn to either ‘stand’ or ‘take the widow’. Players are obliged to follow suit and to ‘head the trick’ i.e. lay down a higher card than the one laid before them if they are able to do so. The kitty is increased with each deal of the cards and at the end of the game the winner of each trick takes a share of the pool for each trick won.

With five card loo there is no widow. Each player puts five counters into the kitty. Each player gets five cards and takes it in turn to be offered the chance to exchange one or more of the cards. The game involves a super-trump i.e. the Knave of Clubs. This was known as Pam which in the words of Alexander Pope was  promoted into:

'Mighty PAM that Kings and Queens o’erthrew                                  

 And Mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo’

Pam is the trump of trumps, beating even the ace of the trump suit. If you play unlimited five card loo and you fail to win the trick you end up being ‘looed’ – forced to pay in the total of whatever is in the kitty. This can happen in successive goes as each player fails to find a winner. In this way fortunes could be won or lost. I have an old card book which contains the solemn instruction “even those to whom the loss of a few thousands (!) is a matter of no consequence are usually careful in their choice of company when playing ‘unlimited’ and fix a maximum which cannot be exceeded”.                                  

18th Century playing cards

Both Richard Hall and his brother-in-law William Snooke played loo, usually noting in their diaries that they lost (or won) a few pence, never more. Meanwhile at the fashionable gaming tables in London many tens of thousands of pounds would be wagered in a single evening. And just so that poor Rowlandson gets a look in amongst all the Gillray cartoons here's his one of the gaming table at Devonshire House - with Georgiana throwing the dice, her sister Harriett removing money from her purse, and with the lecherous Prince of Wales in the background along with Charles Fox.

Some idea of the prevalence of Loo is shown in this letter from Horace Walpole to George Montagu dated 2nd January 1759 (it also demonstrates the social aspects of 'lying in' after childbirth!):

"Loo is mounted to its zenith; the parties last till one or two in the morning. We played at Lady Hertford's last week, the last night of her lying-in, till deep into Sunday morning.It is now adjourned to Mrs Fitzroy's, whose child the Town calls PAM-ela. I proposed that instead  of receiving cards for assemblies we should send in a morning to Dr Hunters, the man-midwife, to know where there is Loo that evening."

Sarah Siddons painted by Gainsborough

Born in Brecon to a theatrical family at a time when female actresses were regarded as little more than harlots, Sarah helped transform the image of women on stage. Audiences were electrified by her performances, particularly as Lady Macbeth , a role which she made her own.

She had started her career with  travelling rep. companies in 1779, appearing mostly in Bath and York, before moving to Drury Lane in 1782 to appear in Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage. She was a sensation and quickly gathered celebrity status and a huge fan base. The undisputed queen of Drury Lane, she was painted by Reynolds as The Tragic Muse in 1784. He signed the portrait at the bottom of her skirt, with the words. "I have resolved to go down in posterity on the hem of your garment."

 

The Tragic Muse by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Her private life was not especially happy - she had married at 18 but the couple drifted apart, but not before she bore her husband 7 children, most of whom she out-lived.

She last appeared on stage in 1813 and died in 1831. A statue erected in her honour stands in Westminster Abbey.

She will be one of the acresses featured in the forthcoming exhibition of First Actresses at the National Portrait Gallery when it opens on 20th October.

English Heritage tell us that dawn on 21^st June saw around 18,000 people milling around Stonehenge.  The  summer Solstice is regularly celebrated by a motley crew of neo-Druids and sun-lovers hopping around the stones, making a nuisance of themselves to the police, who naturally enough, will have seen it as their job to stop grown adults behaving like lunatics even if they are not doing anyone any harm...besides, on a fine morning what can be better than experiencing the thrill of a new dawn at a spot where it has been celebrated for millennia?

An engraving of Stonehenge as it appeared in 1722

Much of the nonsense about Stonehenge and Druidism originates with the work of one William Stukeley. Born in 1687 Stukeley was one of the pioneers of antiquarian research at Stonehenge and one of the first to propose the idea that it was a form of observatory, marking the rising of the sun over the (sixteen feet high) Heel Stone on the longest day of the year.

In the 1740s Stukeley had published detailed works on both Stonehenge and Avebury. By then he was already describing himslef as a Druid, and was convinced that Stonehenge was a druid temple. A friend of Edmund Halley, and a bigrapher and friend of Sir Isaac Newton, he helped give credibility to some rather far-fetched ideas (see my earlier blog about the Bath architects John Wood). His astronomical calculations gave rise to the view that the stone circle was constructed around 400 B.C. (it is now generally accepted that building work took place over  very many centuries - perhaps 1400 years - commencing around 2,900 B.C.).

It helped the site become a fashionable place to visit. Just a fortnight after the solstice in 1773 Richard and his wife journeyed to Salisbury, staying at The Antelope on 5th July ("part dullish, some rain, not sultry"). The next day they visited Wilton House having taken breakfast at Mrs Moore's in Salisbury. They travelled on to Stonehenge before  they "Sup'd and lay at the Bear at Devizes. Preserv'd. Pretty fine day.Little rain. Warm in the Sun"

Wilton House, home to the Earl and Countess of Pembroke, is still a popular tourist attraction, a beautifully restored stately home which has been in the Herbert family for over 450 years. Wilton is less than 10 miles south of Stonehenge.

From Wiltshire the intrepid couple took the stage coach to Tetbury and on to stay with the family in Bourton on the Water. Looks as if they would have enjoyed a nice tourist-y couple of days in the country!

 

Even a brief look at Richard's diaries shows that he had very little affinity with water! He diarised those occasions when he took a bath or washed his feet (never more than once a month...) and it is therefore astonishing that in the 1760's he should have taken himself off to Brighton  (or "Brighthelmstone" as it was then known). 

Oil sketch of Brighton Beach by John Constable 

Saturday August 1st - set out in ye Brighthelmstone Machine (i.e. the Brighton Stage) was thro' divine goodness preserved to that place. A very fine day. Warm.

He obviously thought very little of the preacher on the Sabbath ("a poor tool") and found the place "dull" before adding that he "Bathed in the Sea & was thro divine goodness carried thro it better than I feared. A very fine day. Warm"

The next couple of days continued warm and the swimming trips were repeated without incident until the diary notes "went again to bathe but it did not agree with me" and he never touched the water again! Instead he "went to sea on board the Packet with Wife - returned safe" before returning to London by coach "Breakfast at Lewes, Dinner at Godstone. Got home about 6 o'clock."

        

       Brighton Beach and Colliers painted by John Constable in 1824, some sixty years after Richard's visit.

What we don’t know is whether Richard just strode into the briny or took advantage of one of the bathing machines which started to be available from the 1750's. These structures, often of canvas over a wooden frame, would have been towed down into the water by a horse. Before this happened the swimmer, attired in his normal garb, would have entered through the flap in the back, disrobed and prepared for the encounter with Neptune. Emerging into the sea from the front of the contraption he would have been able to swim without offending public decency (mixed swimming was not encouraged). Men would almost certainly have bathed naked, while women would be expected to wear a long flannel shift, often with lead weights sewn into the hem to stop the garment riding up and exposing the legs. Heaven forfend!

The ladies wetre expected to bathe just east of the Steine with the men using the beach to the west.  Brighton Council's own history pages state  "Ladies were bathed by so called 'dippers' and gentlemen by 'bathers'.  In both cases the subject was plunged vigorously into and out of the water by the bather of dipper.  By 1790 there were about 20 bathers and dippers in Brighton and they continued to do business until about the 1850's"

This is an example of a rather sturdy wooden bathing machine. The contraption is still to be seen at Weymouth by the beach