The J A Gadsby Selling Stakes was run at Leicester on 22 April, at their second flat fixture of the year. The following year the J A was dropped and it was the less formal Gadsby seller until 1992. After that it was usually a handicap until 1997.
Who was J A Gadsby? Well, Arthur Gadsby, as he was more commonly known, didn’t miss a meeting at Leicester between 1950 and (at least) 1994, when he was 71. The Leicester Daily Mercury of 10 June that year reported, “Gadsby first went to Oadby in 1950 to help with the installation of the course’s first photo-finish equipment – and he has stayed. As the course’s maintenance contractor he is responsible for ensuring that virtually everything at the track – from the lights to the drains – is in working order. And for more than 30 years he drove the racecourse ambulance. He works whenever there is a job to be done and that sometimes means on a Sunday evening, with Leicester having several Monday fixtures.”
Gadsby recalled regular attendances of 10,000 in the early 1950s and crowds so big that “when evening racing came in it used to take until midnight to get them all off the course.” He had a business supplying quarter, half and one pound lead weights to go into saddlecloths for racecourses around the country, so that jockeys could ride at precisely the correct weight.
After a hiatus the race reappeared in 2000 as the Arthur Gadsby Half Century Fillies Handicap, marking his presence at the course over fifty years. It resurfaced in 2008 as the Arthur Gadsby Apprentice Handicap and, sadly, in 2013 as the Arthur Gadsby Memorial Handicap.
Sources include:
Leicester Daily Mercury, 10 June 1994