A Glasgow Stakes at the Newmarket Houghton Meeting in late October took place in 1845.
The 5th Earl of Glasgow (1792-1869) loved racing, but in a peculiar way. He refused to name his horses until they had won a race. He was ruthless with any of his horses that ran poorly, and most of them did. If they disapppointed in a race or on the gallops, and he was in a bad temper – which was all too often – they would be shot without further ado. He was too obstinate to change his breeding and buying methods.
He helped to clutter the Newmarket racecards with matches, many against his friend Lord George Bentinck’s superior horses, and provided Bentinck with a healthy additional income. Glasgow was immensely wealthy and his own annual income is thought to be between £5m-£12m at today’s prices. His best known connection with York is the episode when he threw a waiter at the city’s Black Swan hostelry out of the window. He was peeved about the service and didn’t have the option to tweet about it or give a bad review. The waiter broke his arm. “Put him on the bill,” he told the manager, and £5 was duly added to it.
However, another version of this story places it at Doncaster’s Salutation Inn. The errant earl owned Glasgow Paddocks, between the town and the racecourse, where annual horse sales took place for almost a hundred years until 1957. Doncaster has had its Glasgow Handicaps and Stakes during that period.
YORK
Newmarket’s Glasgow Stakes petered out in the early 1900s but York resurrected the race title in 1946 for a nine-furlong maiden. Why is a mystery, for the then Earl (the 8th) was not a major racing figure and despite a valiant naval career was tarred by his support for Mosley’s Fascists. It became the lesser of two Derby trials at the Dante meeting. Commander In Chief won the Glasgow and the Derby in 1993. It was last run at York in 2004.
HAMILTON
It resurfaced at Hamilton in 2006, whose proximity to the city of Glasgow makes me think the title refers to the city rather than the earldom. It’s now an 11-furlong Listed race open to both sexes, run in mid-July.
Sources include:
Fifty Shades of Hay (David Ashforth, p59)
Brewer’s Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics (William Donaldson, p284)
The St Leger (Tony Barber, 2016)