3-000-235 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Coursing meeting at Hampton Park, 1860. Engraving from a sketch by Mr. Elstob Marshall. '...the Hampton Meeting is the great rendezvous for Cockney coursers...This year the coursing at the Champion Meeting was...extremely good on the second [day]; but the hares are unusually scarce, and it will be difficult to find enough of them to last through the season. The grass, too, is unusually long, which, coupled with the wet season, has caused them to run rather weak...[The scene depicts] deciding the course for the Victoria Stakes between Mr. Purser's Pride of the Village, by Black Cloud, and Mr. Allison's Afternoon, by Judge. The first time they were slipped neither of them got sighted, but Afternoon caught a view at last, and had a longish single-handed course, which materially interfered with her chance. At the next attempt Pride of the Village was last out of the slips, but soon passed her opponent, and won a nice trial on all points. Mr. Warwick is always the judge, and Mr. Mills has just been appointed slipper. He has, therefore, still to acquire his knowledge of the ground, for, as our greatest greyhound-writer, "Stonehenge," observes, "Nowhere is experience more wanted than at Hampton Court, as a straight slip is most difficult to get".' From "Illustrated London News", 1860.