Horse Racing and the Upper Classes in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Members of the aristocracy and landowning classes played a key role throughout the nineteenth century in the promotion and running of horse racing. They were able to use racing as means of enhancing their social status and maintaining their prestige, both locally and nationally. Their influence was pervasive in every aspect of the sport – as promoters, administrators, owners, breeders and, in steeplechasing if not in flat racing, as amateur riders. For many of them, heavy gambling was a key element in their involvement in horse racing, and some lost their entire estates through betting. The unrespectable activities of some of the aristocracy involved in racing increasingly served to bring them into disrepute, and by the end of the century, as new men and new money began to become involved in the sport, the dominance of the traditional upper classes in all its aspects was no longer as great as it had been.