An incredible slice of Victorian social history, complete with aristocratic extravagance, rogues and rascals, obsession, dueling, suicide, and murder
In the early 19th century, gambling was a grave social ill that was largely uncontrolled and corrupt. The 1830s saw the institution of the Poor Law, the abolition of slavery, the regulation
of child labor, the birth of the police force, and the widening of parliamentary representation, but gambling was much as it had been since the 18th century: games of faro,
hazard, whist, and roulette could be played in houses around the West End; with racing self-regulated by the Jockey Club and a vaguely defined sense of honor. Racing was the chief
national sporting obsession, however, its popularity was at odds with the increasingly regulated tempo of life in the 1840s, and moralists began to inveigh against the vice. The
government was on a mission to clean up, if not eradicate, gambling in Britain and the premier race, the Derby, was put on public trial. The Derby of 1844 was expected to be a two-horse
race between Ugly Buck and Ratan, owned respectively by John Gully, a social-climbing former prize-fighter, and his great rival, William Crockford, the club owner. The race itself was full
of drama, not least when it became apparent that the horses had both been doped. Nick Foulkes brilliantly takes William Powell Frith's painting "Derby Day" as the inspiration
for a gripping story. There are strong characters, the tension of class rivalries, the drama of the race and the trial, as well as the opportunity to use the gambling of the time as a lens
through which to view the wider social change of the period.
