OLD Q

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1940, Page 6

OLD Q

READY TO BET ON ANYTHING. He was always known as Old Q. Never was there a gambler like him. He would bet on anything. He would lay a bet that tomorrow would be finer than today, that somebody would be married in a year's time, that he would die before you, or after you, just as you pleased. Any bet you cared to lay. there was Old Q ready to put down his wager in good honest guineas. They say he made at least £250,000 on the turf. Once there came to his ears the news' that his jockey had been bribed to lose a race, and Old Q kept silence till 60 seconds before the horses were due to start. Then he flung oft his coat and showed himself dressed as a jockey. Striding his horse, he rode to victory. Old Q| had the queerest tricks. He always ate two breakfasts, and followed these by good meals at live in the evening, seven, ten and midnight. He bathed in milk every morning, and there were many London folk .who gave up drinking milk for fear their dairyman was selling them Old Q s "bath-water.”

William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry, Old Q lived a gay and hectic life, winning the oddest bets to the end of his days. One of the queerest was a bet for a thousand guineas that he could drive a coach at 19 miles an hour, an incredible speed for the middle of the 18th century. But he did it. Another, still more amazing, was that he would undertake to send a letter 50 miles in 90 minutes. Everyone sad it was impossible —he could not do it even with pigeons, and there was no other way. But the Duke won his bet. He put a letter inside a cricket ball, and engaged 50 expert cricketers to stand in a circle and throw the ball round. He won his bet. He died in London on December 23, 1810, and he sleeps under the communion table of St James's Church, Piccadilly. Ho is said to have been a sharp-looking little man who swore like ten thousand troopers.