CHAPTER III - TATTERSALL'S AND THE TURF
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
Summary
Tattersall's! Who has not heard of the name? And yet how few can associate any thing definite with it? It is true, that most people have a faint notion that it has something to do with horses; but beyond that their knowledge does not extend. In the ear of the sportsman and of the votary of the turf, the very sound of “Tattersall's” has a charm of which none but themselves can have any idea. An illustrative chapter on “Tattersall's and the Turf,” will, therefore, I am sure, prove highly interesting to the general reader.
Tattersall's is a large house on the righthand side of Hyde Park Corner, as you enter London from Knightsbridge. It is a place which answers the double purpose of an auctionmart for horses, carriages, gigs, &c, and for all descriptions of betting on the result of the leading horse-races which take place; not to mention various other modes of gambling. To the betting feature of the establishment, I shall refer more particularly hereafter.
In going into Tattersall's, you pass down from Hyde Park Corner, about forty yards, and enter a narrow way, very mews-like in appearance, which you proceed along until you come to a folding door, on your right hand, of considerable dimensions. This door opens into the yard, as it is called, which is about sixty or seventy feet in length, and fifty in breadth, and which, on great days, is so densely populated by the admirers of horse-flesh and the votaries of the turf, that you can hardly find standing room.
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- Travels in TownBy the Author of Random Recollections of the Lords and Commons, etc., pp. 53 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1839