LEFT £19,000

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 164, 20 July 1935, Page 2

LEFT £19,000

ESTATE OF JOCKEY x A COURAGEOUS RIDER LONDON, June 7. The will of William James Speck, the Cheltenham jockey who died on April 16, has been proved at £19,047, with £16,708 net personality. Speck was one of the most courageous steeplechase riders of recent, years. His greatest riding feat was when he wion the Becher ’Chase a<t Liverpool on Thomond 11. in 1932. 1 At the fence before Becher’s Speck lost an iron, and as Thomond II jumped the saddle slipped. Speck pushed the saddle out of the way and finished a thrillfling race riding bareback, getting Thomond II home by half a length. Speck was apprenticed ito Harry , Escott, and tone of the first winners he rode was Mislty Memory at Alexandra Park over twenty years ago. He then went to IStanley Wootton, at Eip- ' som, and, through increasing weight, turned to ’chasing and hurdling. He was third in the last two Grand Nationals, and had ridden nearly 700 winners iln/the last fifteen years. His death resulted from a fall on Gwelo |in a small steeplechase at his home meeting, Cheltenham. ; Speck, who had been riding chiefly for Mr J. A. Anthony’s stable during 1 the last .three years, left the whole of his property on trust for his wife and after her death on trust for the surviving children in equal shares.