Off to the Races. "Tuppence all the way"

by James Dinham

© Gordon Higham

Very few of Torquay's wealthy inhabitants would ever have given a thought to the kind of working day experienced by those they thought of as the "servant class". If they did ever consider the lives of those who fitted this description, they would have had to acknowledge that  it would have been a very long day, for by definition, the function of the servant class was to facilitate the lives of their "betters" through constant service throughout the day. There was, as yet, little control of working hours and the concepts of the "weekend" or any form of paid  holiday had not yet arrived. The only official holidays available to the poor were the eight official annual Bank Holidays and the only people who could could contrive some flexibility around their working hours were  self-employed men like those in the photograph. As to working-class women, nobody, and in particular  their men folk, had any concept of leisure hours for them - "woman's work is never done" was the phrase constantly heard.

The numerous pubs and beer houses of Pimlico had their uses because they provided the men with somewhere to go in the evenings. We forget how cramped were their living quarters with families considered fortunate if they had a whole room to themselves. After a hard day's work, it would have been a relief to go out for a drink while their poor long-suffering wives tried to get the children off to sleep. And too, they would find companionship and the chance to play shove ha'penny or dominoes and that most popular of card games - cribbage - which was always played for money. Amateur wrestling, no holds barred, often took place with a couple of likely lads bribed to thrash seven bells out of each other, up and down the alley ways and front steps of this neighbourhood, while onlookers bet on the outcome.

The nearest official race course was ( and still is) at Newton Abbot but James Dinham's caption suggests that there was another, unofficial, venue for races not so far away. In his  book, Mike Holygate says it was at Petit Tor, adjacent to the marble quarry where, every year an unofficial steeplechase was held on Easter Bank Holiday. These little donkeys and their carts would have carried onlookers to and fro the event for "tuppence all the way". In the year before this picture was taken, the Vicar of Ellacombe wrote to the local newspaper complaining bitterly about "appalling drunkeness and obscenities causing an immoral pandemonium every time Easter comes around."

And he was entitled to his opinion - but did he ever spare a thought for these very small donkeys and the very long, steep climb up to Petit Tor?