JOCKEY’S CONVERSION
RAGING TO RELIGION “ Alfie ” Reid, formerly well known in Victoria as a jockey, especially in the Wimmcra and Western districts, for twenty years, gave his testimony at a Melbourne Baptist Church recently regarding his sudden conversion to Christianity eighteen months ago, and the consequential benefits which he has since enjoyed. Mr Ueul, who gave up race-riding three years ago, lives at Fitzroy, Melbourne. His room there is the converted bar of a delicensed hotel diagonally opposite the Fitzroy Town Hall. He is employed at the factory of the Globe Millinery Company. Ho said the other day that he had never wanted for anything since his conversion to Christianity. Conversion had hgaled all his ills and provided a solution of all his troubles. Inviting a recent interviewer into his room, where the bar counter still stands, Mr Reid lighted a candle, and, talking first of his racing days, he mentioned that he won his first race at his first start on Marroplano at Rainbow, in 1911. He won the last race in which he rode, on A mover, at Gorokc, in 1930. Never, Mr Reid said, had he a blackmark against his name as a jockey. He rode, too, in Tasmania and in South Australia, and for a time after a nervous breakdown he trained a string of horses at Mordialloc. A second breakdown ensued. Down and out at last, he went to the country again to ride, and won two of his last five races. Then his nerves once more wont to pieces, and never again could he figure as a “ knight of the pigskin.” “ I was up against it after that,” Mr Reid said, “ driven to cadging shillings from my racing friends to buy a meal or a bed. 1 suffered from insomnia for months. One night 1 wandered into Mr Bett’s Methodist Mission at Fitzroy. There was a Christian Endeavour meeting on, and a girl was reading the message. It was the ninth chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews. “ There was nothing emotional about the meeting. I was not wrought up—only hungry and tired. Suddenly, while the girl was reading, 1 felt a new man. f felt as if my troubles were over. My nerves quietened, and 1 was happy. 1 do not know what it was, and 1 have no words to describe it. 1 suppose it was an act of God. “It was a wonderful experience. The man who lias not bad it cannot understand it. f. bad beard of ‘ being born again.’ 1 thought that was all Salvation Army talk. But that is what happened to me. From then my insomnia was gone. I found a job in the factory, where I am working now. It was not through Christian people 1 found it. It was made easy for me, but not by men. “ 1 have never wanted for a halfpenny since. And it was not that Christian people put things in my way. 1 have never had a penny from a Christian, save ‘is that Mr Rett’s assistant, Mr Jones, brought jue once. He said a Christian lady at the Endeavour had asked him to give it to Brother Reid ’ —that’s what they call me there.”
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Evening Star, Issue 21711, 4 May 1934, Page 1
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535JOCKEY’S CONVERSION Evening Star, Issue 21711, 4 May 1934, Page 1
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