CURIOUS WAGERS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 14344, 24 October 1910, Page 7

CURIOUS WAGERS.

In the betting book of the famous institution known as White’s Club it (.would appear that the taste of gamblers ■in regard to the objects on which they jbb prepared to stake their money is /different to-day to what it was a cen- ; tnry or a century and a half ago, A writer in the Strand Magazine gives a somber of instances of curious, not to #ay fantastic, wagers. It was quite a common thing, for example, for a member of the club to wager anything from five to a hundred guineas as to the number of his friend’s children and the date of their arrival. A mighty gambler was the Earl of March and Ruglon, better known by his later title of the Duke of Queensberry, and better still as “Old Q.” A famous bet in which he was concerned was known as the “chaise match.” This wager bears the date October 18, 1749. Count Taaffe and another wagered Lords March and Eglinton a thousand guineas that they could not provide a four-wheeled carriage to carry a man and bo drawn by four horses nineteen miles in an hour. “Old Q.” took infinite trouble in trying horse after horse, and carriage after carriage. He chose a horsebreaker’s brake, without the usual high perch, having oil-cans fixed to the boxes of the wheels, and the polo and bars ■ made of thin wood lapped with wire to strengthen them. The springs were of etcol, and the harness of silk and whalebone, and the total weight some two and a half hundredweight. A vast crowd of deeply-interested spectators witnessed the match at Newmarket. The horses did the distance in six minutes and thirty-three seconds under the hour. “Old Q.” was responsible for an amazingly ingenious bet, when he Wagered he would cause a letter to be convoyed fifty miles in an hour, a feat that in those days appeared impossible. His Grace the Duko enclosed the letter in a cricket ball, and stationed a number of cricketers at fixed intervals to throw one another catches with the ball, which by this means covered many miles over the required fifty. Another of his Grace’s quaint wagers was a bet of a thousand guineas that he would find a man to eat more at a sitting than his opponent’s nominee. “Old Q.’s” man beat his antagonist by a pig and an apple pie. A well-known wager was that made by Captain Barclay, who lived in tho days of the Prince Regent. He bet a thousand guineas that ho would walk a thousand miles in a thousand consecutive hours on Newmarket Heath. Between tho miles he lay on o sofa or wont to sleep. When tho final day arrived, the crowd at Newmarket wa-s so largo that a track had to be roped off. Barclay won his wager, and finished very fresh. For a hot, a Mr. Manning, a sporting farmer, in 1851, rede his horso bare-backed into the din-ing-room of an inn at Aylesbury, and without bridle or saddle successfully cleared a dinner table in its full dresslights, dishes, decanters, and all.