a long long time ago.

​I am currently reading John Fairfax-Blakeborough’s ‘Paddock Personalities’, subtitled ‘Being Thirty-Years of Turf Memories’, published around the early 1930’s. There is definitive date of publication.
If you browse the catalogue of booksellers ‘Ways of Newmarket’ you will quickly discover that Fairfax-Blakeborough was a prolific writer of racing books, many of which you will have to stump-up £400 or more to own. Way out of my comfort zone, I can tell you. I don’t believe I have paid more than £35 for a book, though I do lust over many of the rarer books in Ways catalogue. Oh, to be a millionaire and not a pensioner of little means!
I have thus far only got as far as page 34 and already there are gems that must be forwarded to anyone who may stumble upon this website.
Firstly, though, and here I am backing an outsider at longer odds than a John Meacock runner in a Royal Ascot Group 1 back in the seventies and eighties, I am in search of information on Paddy Cowley, the champion National Hunt jockey back in 1908 (or was it 2006?). A relative of his is trying to research his life and is in need of a photograph of him, either a portrait or when riding, or mention of him in a racing book or article. I have exhausted my use on the subject, please get in touch and I’ll pass on any useful information. Cowley died at Hooton Park races in 1911. It’s a long lone time ago.
Back to Fairfax-Blakeborough. The first ‘gem’ was considered an ‘old story’ by the author and perhaps has taken on the aura of an urban legend. It concerned John Osborne when he was a jockey. He later became a successful trainer. He was accused by an owner of not riding to orders. Osborne was known for being courteous and respectful to people and not wanting to seem argumentative, his reply was thus. ‘You’re quite right, and I must apologise for not carrying out all your instructions, but the fact of the matter was that you gave me so many orders the race was not long enough to get them all in.’ I am sure modern-day jockeys can still relate to Osborne’s urbane wit.
Even today, we read letters in the Racing Post and, indeed in articles by their own journalists, on failings committed by racecourses. Owners complaining about the food or service in the owners bar. Trainers complaining about the conditions of the racecourse stables, etc. Yet at the turn of the century till, I believe, around the time of the outbreak of the 1st World War, racecourses did not provide free stabling, or accommodation or food for grooms, no free luncheons or tea for owners and trainers. Trainers would have to find suitable stabling close to the racecourse, in the stables of pubs or hotels.
Horses would be travelled to the races by train, with long walks for horse and lad from the nearest station to the racecourse, in all weathers. Jockeys and trainers would have to catch a train to and from the racecourse, with early starts and late finishes, as of today. The railway stations close to Sandown and Newbury, for instance, are not there by chance. The owners of racecourses lobbied the train companies to build them on the promise of healthy profits on race-days.
Fairfax-Blakeborough surprised me when he wrote that as early as the 1930’s owners and trainers were using aeroplanes to get to race-meetings as I considered this a more modern development. Since 1900, the world has changed at a pace unequalled at any other time in history. In 1900 it would have been impossible for a trainer in Newmarket to watch his horses on the Heath in the morning and be at a racecourse in the north of England in the afternoon, yet train and car turned that on its head. In fact, I would suppose, with less traffic on the roads in the 1930’s, the journey from Newmarket to Thirsk could be accomplished quicker back then than with the faster cars of today.
Fairfax-Blakeborough, balances the then and now of travel by citing the achievement of a Middleham-based jockey, Tommy Lye, who in 1834 rode two winners on an afternoon at Edinburgh, caught the Carlisle coach (carriage and 4-horses, I would say) ‘and by means of it and post-horses reached Northallerton in time to ride two more winners the following afternoon.’ It was not unheard-of for jockeys of that period to hack great distances with their saddles tied to their backs to get from home to a race-meeting and back. Modern jockeys have it so easy, don’t they? 
One comment the author does make, which ties in nicely with my assertion that we need in our time to associate race-meetings with local fairs and holidays to reinvigorate the racecourse experience, is that between 1900 and the early 1930’ he had noticed a ‘different spirit amongst the racing crowds’. Less leisurely, less friendly, less interested in the sport and horses and more concerned with the commercial side, by which, I believe, he means betting. ‘The whole atmosphere of the paddock and basic motives seem to have altered.’
I look forward to delving deeper into the history of horse racing during the years of the author’s reminiscences and will doubtless pilfer his knowledge and insight for future pieces for this website. Out of copyright, thankfully, though keeping the name of John Fairfax-Blakeborough alive, not that he’ll ever become a forgotten man of racing literature.