When West Ham Went to the Dogs E-Book

Brian Belton

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 225

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2002

Beschreibung

Beginning with a loving history of greyhound racing, Brian Belton tells the tale of a time and a place when the punters of the East End of London came together to urge their dogs on.

Leseprobe

When

West Ham

went to the

Dogs

OVER THEY GO - FOUR IN A LINE - flashes of canine colour as they streak down the track and over the hurdles. Speed and grace in every movement. Try Greyhound Racing one evening. Meetings every Monday and Wednesday at 8 p.m. with eight events including hurdle races in every programme.

ADMISSION: 1/3; 2/-; 2/6; 5/-

When

West Ham

went to the

Dogs

Brian Belton

This book is dedicated to Rosy, Christian … and Little Reg.

First published in 2002

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Brian Belton, 2002, 2013

The right of Brian Belton to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5249 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & DEDICATION

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1

SOLOMON’S DOGS

2

THE RACING WORLD

3

COCKNEY DOGS

4

THE MILLER’S TALE

5

THE CUTLET, THE QUEEN AND BOB

6

CALL ME ATAXY!

7

THE GLORIOUS BEGINNINGS OF THE INEVITABLE END

8

AND THEN THE DOGS WERE GONE

APPENDIX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My grandmother used to sell West Ham Greyhound programmes outside the track on race nights. Later, with my dad, she took my brother and me to Custom House to ‘see the doggies run’. In time I’d bunk in to watch the meetings, but mostly mix with and observe those people who loved the dogs, punters, trainers, bookmakers and owners. I learnt about dogs, but more importantly this is the place where I started to comprehend what it was that motivated, excited and disappointed people. They were funny, they were good, they were bad tempered, argumentative, loud, shy, obsessive, interesting, talkative, easy going, optimistic and depressed. They were extrovert, cynical, boring, kind and mad. They were liars, cheats, miserable and greedy, nervous, honest and happy. They were wise, stupid, ignorant and intelligent. They were people who inhabited a time, a place and a life. They were human reality in all its forms and they educated me in what it was to live and let live. They showed me how to find generosity in the dark reaches of despair. One day I’ll write a book about them, but for now I will write about their world.

What follows was only possible because of the great help munificently given by a number of people. In particular, this history owes its existence to two former track employees Mr Bob Rowe, the one-time racing manager at West Ham, and Mr Tommy Pickett, the head lad at track for most of his racing career. A number of photographs were supplied by Mr Floyd Amphlett of the Greyhound Star, a true knight of the track. Another person was inspirational. He is probably the most active historian connected to greyhound racing: Mr Cliff Mettam. These gentlemen all possess the qualities of those who have loved and love the dogs, but they are also good and kind people, hospitable and humane. It is their devotion and affection for their sport, and all those who attended and were involved with West Ham greyhounds that this work is dedicated to.

‘GOOYON THE SIX DOG!!!’

FOREWORD

Greyhound racing has always been a big part of my life. When I was small, Dad was involved in bookmaking. He was frequently on the course at Harringay, Wembley, White City (London), Park Royal, Hendon and of course his original home track at West Ham. He was born in East London and as such West Ham, the basis of this, Brian Belton’s book, will always have a place in my heart. The stadium had a wonderful atmosphere.

However, I was born not in West Ham but in West Hendon, London, a few hundred yards from Hendon Greyhound Racetrack. Just half a dozen steppingstones across the Brent Stream, which flowed into Dollis Brook and I was in the owners’ and trainers’ car park of this stadium, as magic for me and West Ham was for the author of this book. My home was, as such, in easy earshot of the Hendon kennel complex. Little did I know in those first days of 1930s, the very dawn of organised greyhound racing, that this location would greatly influence my life and career. It is hard to communicate how greyhound racing was seen in those days. For kids like me, the enthusiasm generated by greyhound racing was easily equal to that provoked by football and cricket. It dominated our conversation and interest. The names and performances of dogs captivated us and we looked up to the trainers for their intelligence and skill.

After the First World War, Dad furthered his education at the London School of Economics. He was brilliant mathematician and was able to master the percentages and fractions that governed greyhound racing with consummate ease. This made him a very able and gifted Course Clerk. During the early 1940s, dad taught me the ‘North Country’ totting process that he adopted on course. It proved to be an invaluable method of knowing one’s liabilities at any given time and especially useful as my introduction to hedging in later life.

During this period I had the luck of seeing Tricky Mickey, Mickey Fingers as we knew him, in action as a tic-tac at Brighton Racecourse and at Hove Dogs in Neville Road. Fingers was poetry in motion when relaying odds. He was a form of entertainment in himself, able to hold the attention of onlookers and leave youngsters like me spellbound with his dexterity and astuteness. He must have earned his guv’nor countless thousands of pounds, as he was personally able to manipulate the starting prices with a flick of his wrist if he so desired.

After seeing Mickey I used to go home and practice tic-tac in front of the mirror. A useful method as it undoubtedly helps one to receive as well as relay. It was this that, in 1951, enabled me to gain work with the Magnus firm in the popular enclosure at Hendon Dogs as a floorman tic-tac. Nowadays that hallowed ground is covered by Junction 1 of the M1 Motorway and one of the first mega-size shopping complexes to be built in Britain.

I was to work for the same guv’nor as Mickey at Wembley and Watford (Vicarage Road) Dogs, but before this I was employed by Billy and Alf Mahon and also did some work for Margolis and Ridley. But the introduction of betting shops brought new opportunities. I worked as a boardman for Burns and Downes at Willesden Green. The ‘Downes’ in the firm’s title was Terry Downes, one of the greatest boxers Britain as ever produced. I briefly acted as his chauffeur when he lost his driving licence.

I moved on to the Stan Gilbert Group (turf accountants) and worked at all nineteen of their betting shops. In the early days of these new betting shops, I was a boardman at their Varley Parade shape in Colindale. I wore a brown smock with a duster in the pocket and got smothered in the chalk that was used to show the runners and odds. The racing results and runners came over the Tannoy system thick and fast, including the results from West Ham, down deep in Dad’s East End homeland.

During 1959 and the early 1960s I had dogs with Bob Burls at Wembley (I was subsequently granted a private trainer’s licence, but that’s another story). It was around 1959 that I was formally introduced to Jack Harvey and his wife Angela. Harry (Jack) Harvey was my schoolboy idol. He had already won the Prestigious Greyhound Derby with Davesland in 1934 during his training days at Harringay, when he was living at the famous G.R.A. kennels at Hook Lane in Hertfordshire. Jack later progressed and trained at Wembley on Captain Brice’s recom-mendation. Jack had many successes and in 1955 he had three finalists in the Greyhound Derby, but his Grand National champion, odds on favourite Barrowside, narrowly lost the great race by less than a length. Jack however bounced back in 1959 and won the English, Scottish and Welsh Derbys, thus completing the Triple Crown with the brindle ‘Mile Bush Pride’. I was proud to have seen it all and was also at West Ham Stadium the night when Mile Bush Pride trounced the opposition, winning the Cesarewitch as the red hot 2/7 favourite. It was a wonderful night. Mile Bush Pride was to hold the 600-yard track record of 32.65 for many years.

Well, blackboards and chalks were disposed of and new melamine white boards were used with coloured board markers instead of chalk and permanent ink board markers for our s/p headings, which could not be reused by mistake. Now of course coloured television and personalised information screens with all the ante-post prices have superseded boards and the old anker stamping and timing devices. The board man has disappeared into a multicoloured mist of historical chalk dust along, unfortunately, with West Ham’s fine old racetrack.

I went on to work at Gilbert’s head office in North Finchley dealing with their evening returns. The evenings were especially good when many of their shops had a winning day and the spirits cabinet was opened up by the guv’nors and we all went home ‘happy’.

I was floorman tic-tac for Ken Munden at White City London before that stadium, like Custom House a dozen years earlier, closed in the autumn of 1984. Many of my colleagues and the bookmakers there transferred their on-course business interests to Walthamstow, Wimbledon and of course to Wembley Stadium, but that was also to close its doors to greyhound racing on Friday 18 December 1998.

Having got so much from greyhound sport, like Brian Belton I think it is important to preserve and celebrate its history. Anything without a history has no real existence. However, this is not an easy enterprise, because although dog racing is a love of so many, as phenomenon is trapped in the present. My ambition now is to find a secure and permanent museum for the artefacts of the Greyhound Racing Historical Society as a tribute to all the greyhounds, the trainers, the dedicated kennel staff, the owners and personalities associated with the sport of greyhound racing from the early coursing days. Many of them are named in this book and as such I hope that it will help you to realise how much we owe to those who have been closely associated with greyhounds over the centuries. If it hadn’t have been for their enthusiasm our sport, and the challenge and enjoyment it gives to so many, would not exist.

Cliff Mettam – Chair of the Greyhound Racing Historical Society

Alway’s first home… but never a winner

INTRODUCTION

A day’s work

The 1 dog is dressed in the red of fire, To be away from the crowd is his only desire, Burning and blazing, the long way round, Hot in his lonely passion he flames the ground. When the heat seems extinguished and there’s no fear of attack, That’s when the inferno ignites, from the outside of the track.

From ‘The Ballad of the West Ham Dogs’

All sport is frolicsome battle and it demands warrior qualities. In fact the extent to which a sport calls on such skills and instincts, the more it exposes it marshal origins, the more popular it is likely to be. The roots of sporting activity run deep and are entwined in the necessity our far off ancestors had to kill. The echoes of this, the frightening, chaotic elements of sport, are what draw spectators to it. Herein is something more archaic than the simple need for victory, those who have competed in serious sport will know that the ‘will to win’ is motivated by more fundamental drives that have their origins in ancient hunger and primitive needs to pursue or escape.

When we watch greyhounds shooting out of the traps we see creatures riding their instincts to catch and kill as they seek to run down an artificial hare. Track racing evolved from coursing and that ‘sport’ developed out of the need for food. This hits something at the core of our being and vibrates the strings of our biological heritage.

If you should see a wolf chase another creature as its food, you perceive a controlled panic fired by desperation. When one views a hound, not particularly in need of sustenance, chase a smaller creature with every intention of killing it, what you are observing is a clash between fear and desire. To be one of hundreds or thousands watching a greyhound in pursuit of a hare that can’t be caught, the excitement of the punter, the owner and the trainer has its source in need. The phantom of the kill is still present. The essence of the sport is that heady, primeval mixture of chaos and fear. It is this that charms people to involve themselves with greyhounds.

This is to not say that a night out at the dogs is motivated by a kind of blood lust, although anyone who has been to a greyhound meeting will have heard frustrated punters vent their spleen; ‘Fall over yer bastard’ and ‘Break the fucker’s back’ are a couple of recent cries I have come across and have heard variations of over the years. I picked up a very original order just before writing this book: ‘Get back under the table you shit-coloured nonce’. The people who articulated these ‘instructions’ are unlikely to have actually meant them. The words give expression to feelings; they are not prescriptions for action or notifications of intention. The words encapsulate expressions of desperation, dashed hopes and pain, but they are said in the context of the frivolity that is sport. These words do not carry harm in this environment premised on the yearnings fired by imagination. It is the same in other sports; for instance, at a Celtic v. Rangers match you might hear the green-clad supporters singing of ‘wading through Protestant blood’, but that doesn’t mean that is what they want to do. It is provocative, but that is all that it is as long as it is part of a frivolous sporting context. Those who wish to rid sport of such provocation do not understand sport or simply do not want sport to exist in society. In the sporting situation of greyhound racing the fact is that we spill money rather than blood and give time and effort in training and sorting form rather than in tracking, but we are there, at West Ham, Walthamstow, Wimbledon or wherever, fulfilling a definite and very old psychophysical drive.

In a way this book is a history of the playing out of this drive within the milieu of West Ham greyhound racing that took place at the massive East End arena sometimes known as Custom House Stadium and at others called West Ham Stadium. Dog racing meetings were held at this venue from the earliest days of the sport in Britain until the start of the 1970s, when the site of this noble amphitheatre was sold to developers.

However, how does one start to write such a history? Over the near half century that West Ham hosted greyhound sport, there were something like 7,500 meetings. That’s about 75,000 races and 450,000 runners. The number of dogs that ran at West Ham exceeded 5,000. But how can one understand what West Ham was unless it is placed in the world of which it was a part? To write the story of a greyhound track without elaborating its historical context and how it fitted in with the world of dog racing is about as wise as organizing a greyhound meeting but neglecting to arrange for the use of a track and a stadium.

The pages that follow will tell the story of the development of greyhound sport from a ‘West Ham’ perspective, as West Ham greyhound racing grew as part of and alongside the sport of which it was a representative part. It will, through West Ham’s record holders and Classic winners, show how grey-hound racing generated and grew in its East End, national and international incarnations. But, the main path I have chosen to explore and illuminate the meaning, function and fact of West Ham greyhound racing is its cockney Classic, the Cesarewitch. This definite reference point gives some orientation in time and a sense of the place that West Ham occupied in the expansion and demise of greyhound sport. The Cesarewitch also helps demonstrate West Ham’s role in a world and a culture based upon competition and expressed through breeding, training and gambling.

Noble Racing Hounds

So, let’s go to the dogs. Get there for the first race, so we can see how the form is going, how the track is shaping. It was always worth the effort. The dogs at West Ham were another world; a world apart, a place often used to escape, but it was never escapism — it was always too real for that. But while you’re there it’s hard to think of anything else.

There’s fifty years of racing ahead. Magicians like Biss and Appleton have brought some wonderful dogs that will run for us – there’s Mick and Jewel, the Queen and the Prince and many, many more. Get a good place to watch from, it’s gonna be packed…They’re going in the traps!

That bitch in the blue, Runs from trap 2, In her cold attire, She does aspire, To be the first over the line, In a track record time.

Chilly Queen of azure, She is frosty and pure

Demure in rime, She is awesome and fine. With an icy stare, She pursues the hare, Her backers she’ll please, As her combatants freeze, And the victory she’ll deliver, Bequeathing only defeat’s harsh shiver.

From ‘The Ballad of the West Ham Dogs’

1

SOLOMON’S DOGS

The Greyhound

I have myself bred up a hound whose eyes are the greyest of grey; a swift, hard-working softfooted dog; in his prime a match at any time for four hares. He is moreover most gentle and kindly affectioned. Never before had any dog such regard for myself and friend and fellow sportsman, Megillus … He is the constant companion of whichever of us may be sick; and if he has not seen either us for but a short time, he jumps up repeatedly by way of salutation, barking with joy as a greeting to us …

Thus wrote Flavius Arrianus. Arrian, as the writer is better known, was born in Nicomedia in Asia Minor and became a citizen of Athens. Later, through his consular work, he became a Roman citizen and advanced to senatorial dignities. Familiar with the greyhound breed from his youth, he wrote the earliest known treatise on the greyhound (the cynegeticus), of which the above is part. It was written in the second century AD, when Hadrian was Emperor, but it was not discovered until the late eighteenth century, in the Vatican archives. It was translated by ‘A Graduate of Medicine’ in 1831 and shows Arrian as a most humane man and a great lover of greyhounds. However, humanity’s love for this breed seems to go back to times even before Arrian.

They’re in the traps

The stands are packed full of expectant and anxious spectators. The six Greyhound Derby finalists, muscles rippling lazily under their lightweight jackets, complete their parade with the green of the centre track in the background. The multi-coloured board flashes the latest betting figures that occupy the attention of the stadium’s East End punters. The bookmakers gathered round the home straight, beneath the main stand, shout the last-minute odds, which are frantically signaled across the stadium by white-gloved tic-tac men. Kennel lads in bowler hats carefully lodge their canine charges in the starting boxes. A starting bell rings out and the stadium lights dim. The racetrack becomes an illuminated oval ribbon under blazing overhead lamps. The audience of 35,000 is silenced for what seems like an eternal second, as the electronic hare, heard before it is seen, wobbles and whirls to a start. As this perennial fugitive, ‘Harry’ at West Ham, ‘Swifty’ in Florida, picks up speed, the crowd releases the famous Cesarewitch roar, which mounts to an eruption of noise as the hare tears past the starting box. Up spring the traps with an instant ‘thwack’ and a blurring streak of six champion greyhounds fly free in hot pursuit of their quarry. For the winner there will be fame and for its owner there will be fortune. The chase through these incident-packed bends and straights lasts not much more than 30 seconds, and another Classic event in British greyhound racing is over for another year. The winner, who may have cost a working man’s weekly wage as a pup, or the equivalent of half a year’s earnings for the average West Ham Stadium spectator as a grown dog, is led to the presentation dais, tail wagging, to receive the gold and blue jacket of honour. A cup and cheques are presented to owner and trainer.

Hammerin’ round

To greyhound racing enthusiasts across the planet and over time, this scene will be familiar. A description of the American Derby at Taunton, in the United States, or the National Greyhound Sprint Championship in Sydney, Australia would have been little different. The essential elements would also be found in Ireland, Spain, the Canary Islands, New Zealand, Indonesia, Macao (China), Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland, although betting is not permitted in some of these countries.

This pattern, this set of traditions, arises out of the history of racing greyhounds on an oval track, which extends back in time less than one hundred years, but it is also the product of the intimate relationship between humanity and greyhound ancestry that can be traced back several thousands of years. It is mentioned in the Bible and the breed has been prized by a number of civilizations and peoples as a hunting dog. What we call ‘the greyhound’ is a dog that has been shaped and is still being shaped by human needs and desires. This might seem manipulative, but this interaction has been of mutual benefit to both canine and human kind.

The greyhound is a ‘lively breed’. Its continued relevance and role in society stands in stark contrast to other types of dog that have either disappeared or lost their place as active creatures, able to give full reign to their instincts and unique gifts. The greyhound has not become a cosseted creature, the type that inhabits the domestic dens of modern urban society. It has been able to avoid much of the indignity of character repression that many of the fighters and hunters of old have been subject to at the behest of human whim. The greyhound is not the colonised animal, taught to beg and roll over. It may run after a hare, but it might be less likely to bring it back. The greyhound still seeks out a prey and runs in packs in pursuit of the same. The dog is lauded for the capabilities bestowed upon it by nature and its fame is derived from its might, its courage and intelligence. As such, the greyhound, like few other breeds, has, in its relationship with humanity, held on to its distinction and pride, in that it has retained its essential personality. Anyone who has seen a greyhound race will recognise this: its hunger for the chase before the hare has come into its sight and its obvious pleasure in its own performance when the race has been run. This dignity that arises out of the greyhound’s common interests with human beings has given the breed an honoured place in society and history.

Race day

The greyhound, alongside its cousins the Persian saluki, the Afghan hound and the borzoi of the Russian Steppes, has its origins in the desert of southern Arabia. These animals would have found their way to Egypt by way of the incense trade, as part of the caravans that criss-crossed this part of the world, serving the ancient civilisations that lived and thrived there. The Necropolis at Wl-Ourna, close to Thebes on the Nile, contains murals that include hounds with leg and ear featherings similar to those associated with the saluki. The greyhound is imprinted on the palm of the ostrich feathers found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. The dog depicted is strikingly reminiscent of those that would have struck out of the traps at West Ham, and their kith and kin that race on the modern race tracks of the twenty-first century.

In the Old Testament the greyhound is one of Solomon’s ‘four things which are most comely in going’. As such, it would be likely that the Queen of Sheba took a number of her finest animals with her when she visited Solomon in Jerusalem around 1000 BC. There is a West Country legend that a pair of these, having been gifted to Solomon, were brought to England, to Tintagel in Cornwall, and exchanged for a shipload of the precious tin that was mined there. The tale goes on that when the boy Jesus was brought to the same part of the world a millennium later, accompanying his trading uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, he saw some of the descendants of Solomon’s dogs being coursed. The young carpenter’s son felt pity for the hare, who didn’t seem to have a chance against the sharp-eyed, lightning fast hounds, but he was also sorry for one of the dogs, who having failed to win for its master was being beaten violently. It is at this mythical point that the greyhound breed’s sense of smell was curtailed, but the animal was compensated with an affable personality and the ability to provoke human affection.

As the hound reached the cooler, more northerly parts of Persia it grew a thicker coat to become the Persian wolfhound. It joined forces with human hunters to fight off the threat of wolves and bears, starting to create the empathy, solidarity and sense of teamwork that developed to make co-operative, symbiotic activity between the species possible.