Never Say Die: A Kentucky Colt, the Epsom Derby, and the Rise of the Modern Thoroughbred Industry

Chapter 7: A Derby-less Trainer

111 Chapter 7 A Derby-less Trainer Upon arrival in England, Never Say Die was sent to Carlburg Stables, the Newmarket training yard of seventy-two-year-old Joe Lawson. At that time, Sterling Clark split his horses between Lawson and another trainer named Harry Peacock. Peacock had won a coin flip to determine which man would receive first choice of Clark’s horses that year. Though he liked the look of Never Say Die, Peacock was not interested in training a son of Nasrullah . Nasrullah was well on his way to having one of the most outstanding stud careers in history, but the memory of the stallion’s inability to reach his potential because of his idiosyncrasies was still fresh in the minds of many horsemen. Peacock’s lack of faith in Nasrullah’s offspring was Lawson’s gain and would bring the veteran trainer one last taste of celebrity in the waning years of a lengthy and accomplished career. Born in the northeast of England in 1881, near where the River Tyne flows into the North Sea, Lawson had grown up, like so many trainers, with an ambition to be a jockey. But by the age of sixteen he was already battling to make weight and had to give up the trade. He signed on at the famous Manton training yard in 1898, where he would spend close to half a century, eventually taking over as master trainer. His boss for the first thirty years at Manton was “Young” Alec Taylor, who, along with his half Never Say Die 112 brother Tom, had inherited Manton from their father in 1895. “Old” Alec Taylor had built the state-of-the-art facility with the help of a wealthy owner and some successful betting coups. They selected the location outside of Marlborough in Wiltshire, on the main road from London to Bath, for its seclusion from crowds, touts, and bookmakers’ spies. The yard was practically perfect when Taylor began training there in 1870. The Sporting Life reported , “Those fortunate enough to visit the Manton establishment cannot fail to be impressed by the completeness of every detail. The buildings possess a singularly attractive and quiet beauty. [There are] spacious paddocks, splendid stables, and boxes [stalls] unsurpassed for size and abundance of light and air.”1 Old Taylor trained the winners of eight classics at Manton, laying the foundation for its reputation as one of the most famous and prestigious training facilities in all of Britain. Initially, Alec and Tom struggled to duplicate their father’s success at Manton. Alec had served under his father his entire working life and handled the training, while Tom controlled the business side of the operation. The brothers’ fortunes worsened when a fifteen-year-old stable boy who had been in the Taylors’ employ for only three months was admitted to a local hospital with signs of tubercular meningitis. The boy eventually died from the ailment, but not before authorities were alerted to severe bruising up and down his legs. Newspapers began to investigate rumors of abuse suffered by young employees at the hands of Manton managers, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children quickly gave its support to the investigation. Former stable hands came out of the proverbial woodwork to tell tales of corporal punishment meted out at the famous training yard. Tom Taylor and two other foremen were consistently identified as the primary offenders. The three men were charged with manslaughter and “assault causing grievous bodily harm” in the case of the young stable boy, but when the coroner concluded that the cause of his death was meningitis, A Derby-less Trainer 113 the manslaughter charges were dropped. Tom Taylor was subsequently acquitted of the assault charge because of insufficient evidence of the severity of the beatings and the existence of the Master and Servant Act, which allowed masters to physically discipline their servants. The same defense was not available to the foremen, however, and they were both found guilty of assault. The judge had choice words for the guilty parties: “The suggestion that a boy was somewhat late in the morning, or that the hot water in the afternoon was not as hot as it ought to be [is] no justification for any man taking a horse whip and a big stick and knocking a boy about.” The judge then turned his wrath to the entire Manton...