Doncaster Eccentrics
Among the visitors to Doncaster race-course are many of the lower grade, some of whom have contrived to get hanged. Such was the case some half-century since with Daniel Dawson, who employed himself, or was employed by others, in poisoning with arsenic the drinking-water of horses whose success in the future race was not desirable to Daniel or his patrons. Several steeds perished in this way at the hands of Daniel, in the north as well as at Newmarket. Ultimately a case from the latter locality was proved against him, through the treachery of a confederate, and Daniel suffered for it at Cambridge. Had he been a martyr in a good cause, he could not have died with more becomingness. Daniel complained of no one, did not even reproach himself; and expressed his satisfactory conviction that he “should certainly ascend to Heaven from the drop.” Brutal as his offence was, it seems ill-measured justice that takes a man’s life for that of a beast.
Dawson is beyond our own recollection; but we can remember a more singular and a much more honest fellow, whose appearance on the Doncaster course was as confidently looked for, and as ardently desired, as that of any of the Lords Lieutenant of the various Ridings. We allude to the once famous Jemmy Hirst, the Rawcliffe tanner, whose last of about fifty visits to the “Sillinger” and “Coop” contests was made when he was hard upon ninety years of age. When Jemmy retired from the tanning business with means to set up as a gentleman, the first object he purchased was not a carriage, but a coffin, depositing therein some of the means whereby he kept himself alive, namely, his provisions. The walls of the room in which this lugubrious sideboard was erected were hung round with all sorts of rusty agricultural implements. This lord of a strange household retained a valet and a female “general servant.” His stud consisted of mules, dogs, and a bull; mounted on which he is said to have hunted with the Badsworth hounds. His most familiar friends were a tame fox and otter. He certainly rode the bull when he went out shooting, and was then accompanied by pigs as pointers. In fair-time Hirst used to take this bull and a couple of its fellows to be baited, sitting proudly by himself while his valet went about collecting the “coppers.” His waistcoat was a glossy garment made of the neck feathers of the drake, from the pocket of which he would issue his own bank-notes, bearing responsibilities of payment to the amount of “Five half-pence.”
His carriage was a sort of palanquin, carried aloft by high wheels, and its peculiarity was that there was not a nail about it. This vehicle was really better known at Doncaster than the stately carriage of Lord Fitzwilliam himself. It was the boast of the proud and dirty gentleman who sat enthroned there, that he had never paid and never would pay any sort of tax to the King; and how he managed to shoot, as he did, without paying a licence, was best known to himself. He was the most popular man on the course, and, unlike very many who began rich and ended poor, Jemmy increased in wealth year by year. He was wont to contrast himself with “the Prince’s friend,” Col. Mellish, who inherited an immense property, won two Legers in two consecutive years, 1804-5, and finally died almost a pauper. Jemmy had undoubtedly, in his view of things, done better than Col. Mellish; but the tanner, through life, never thought of the welfare but of one human being—that of James Hirst. He was as selfish as the butcher-churchwarden of Doncaster, who ruined the grand old tower of the church by placing a hideous clock face in it, which was so constructed that no one could see the time by it except from the butcher’s own door!
We should hardly render Hirst justice, however, if we omitted to state how such a great man departed from this earth. The folding-doors of his old coffin were closed upon him. Eight buxom widows carried his corpse for a honorarium of half-a-crown each. Jemmy had expressed a desire to have eight old maids to undertake this service, bequeathing half-a-guinea to each as hire. But the ladies in question were not forthcoming. So the widows were engaged in their place; but why the fee was lowered we cannot tell, unless it was to pay for the bagpipe and fiddle which headed the procession. All the country round flocked in to do Jemmy honour or to enjoy the holiday; and for many a year afterwards might the sorrowing comment be heard on Doncaster Course,—“Nay, lad! t’Coop-day seems nought-loike wi’out Jemmy!” and the mourners took out his “Fihawpence notes,” and compared their own touching respective memories of the departed glory of Doncaster.
At the close of Jemmy’s career the wonderfully dressed “swell mob” was busiest if not brightest. The latter was only short-lived. A party of them really dazzled common folk by the splendour of their turn-out, both as regarded themselves and their equipage. People took them for foreign princes, or native nobility returned from foreign climes, and not yet familiarly known to the public. The impression did not last long. The well-dressed, finely-curled, highly scented, richly-jewelled strangers, sauntering among the better known aristocracy, commenced a series of predatory operations which speedily brought them within the fastness of the town gaol. No one who saw them there a day or two later, after seeing them on the course, will ever forget the sight and the strange contrast. Stripped of their finery, closely cropped, and clad in coarse flannel dresses, they might be seen seated at a board, with a hot lump of stony-looking rice before them for a dinner.
Altogether, there was occasionally a very mixed society on and about the course: among the so-to-speak professional habitués, men who made a business of the pursuit there—who were actors rather than spectators, and all of whom have disappeared without leaving a successor in his peculiar line,—we may mention the old Duke of Leeds, redolent of port; the white-faced Duke of Cleveland, “the Jesuit of the Ring;” P. W. Ridsale, ex-footman, then millionaire, finally pauper; blacksmith Richardson, who, shaking his head at “Leeds,” would remark of himself, that sobriety alone had saved him from being hanged; Mr. Beardsworth, who had been originally a hackney-coachman, then sporting his crimson liveries; Mr. Crook, who commenced life with a fish-basket; and the well-known son of the ostler at the Black Swan, in York, wearing diamond rings and pins, betting his thousands, and looking as cool the while, as if he not only largely used the waters of Pactolus, but owned half the gold-dust on its banks.
The two extremes of the official men as regarded rank, were, perhaps, Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Gully, the ex-pugilist. The former introduced, at Doncaster, the signal-flag to regulate the “starts,” and he founded the Bentinck Fund (with the money subscribed for a testimonial to himself), for the relief of decayed jockeys and trainers. The two men were equals in one respect, the coolness with which they either won or lost. They who remember the year when Petre’s Matilda beat Gully’s Mameluke, and who witnessed the event and its results, speak yet with a sort of pride of Gully’s conduct. He had lost immensely; but he was the first man who appeared in the betting-rooms to pay anyone who had a bet registered against him; and he was the last man to leave, not retiring till he was satisfied that there did not remain a single claimant. He paid away a grand total on that occasion which properly invested, would have set all the poor in Doncaster at ease for ever.—Abridged from the Athenæum, No. 1715.