Boxing clever

Dubbed “the leviathan of the turf”, Lord George Bentinck ran a hugely successful racing stable at Goodwood and is credited with inventing the horsebox

Words by Alex Moore

From 1841 until 1846, Goodwood was home to the country’s foremost horseracing stables, thanks to a fascinating friend of the 5th Duke of Richmond, Lord William George Frederick Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, aka “the leviathan of the turf”. “Bentinck was a complex character with seemingly conflicting interests in racing,” says Dr Alexandra Fletcher, Packard Curator at the National Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket. “He was a gambler who engineered a number of major betting coups, yet he also made strenuous efforts to eliminate fraud in racing.”

The recklessness of Lord George’s wagers staggered even the most profligate gamblers of the time. At the St Leger of 1826, for example, he lost £30,000 (about £3 million today), and when he was reluctant to settle his bets – usually when he suspected foul play – he would often find himself in hot water. Once he even found himself embroiled in a duel on Wormwood Scrubs with legendary huntsman and cricketer Squire Osbaldeston. The encounter ended with Bentinck shooting his pistol into the air and the flustered squire firing a bullet through his opponent’s hat.

Still, as the owner of 38 competing racehorses, he was more than capable of making his own luck. His coup de maître came in 1836, when, unhappy with the odds given for his horse Elis, he gave the impression that the colt would no longer be racing. The fact that no one had seen the horse being walked the 200-or-so miles from Goodwood to Doncaster – as was customary at that time – served to reinforce this rumour. Only after the odds lengthened to 12/1 did he covertly transport Elis to Yorkshire in the world’s first recorded horsebox. On fresh legs, Elis galloped to victory, leaving Bentinck with a considerable profit – much to the consternation of the other trainers.

“Yet he championed fair play,” says Fletcher, and when Bentinck sold his stables in 1846, his close friend Benjamin Disraeli said, “He not only parted with the finest racing stud in England, but he parted with it at a moment when its prospects were never so brilliant; and he knew this well… He had become the Lord Paramount of that strange world, so difficult to sway, and which requires, for its government, both a stern resolve and a courtly breeding.”

Disraeli added, “The turf was not merely the scene of the triumphs... He had purified its practice and had elevated its character, and he was prouder of this achievement than of any other... Notwithstanding his mighty stakes, and the keenness with which he backed his opinion, no one perhaps ever cared less for money. He valued the acquisition of money on the turf because there it was the test of success. He counted his thousands after a great race, as a victorious general counts his cannon and his prisoners.”

CHRONICLE/ALAMY

Below: an 1837 painting by Abraham Cooper showing Lord George Bentinck’s horse Elis with the horsebox in which he was secretly transported from Goodwood to Doncaster