Obituary : Helen Johnson Houghton

Very interesting. She retired just before my time and tbh I had never heard of her though I certainly remember Florence Nagle. As a lad I used to think it odd that two successful trainers had such an unusual name as Fulke. Finally explained       

Indeed, salmon - A good line of lineage there.

Like yourself - I knew of Florence Nagle eventually winning Women's 'Right to Train' from the Jockey Club...

However, the predominant Female trainer of that time would have been Miss  Auriol Sinclair - whose horses were trained  under the name of her Head Lad, and future trainer at Lewes,  M J Bolton.

Not that is matters but some stuff on colours on these important folks...

Mrs Florence Nagle - Rifle Green, Red crossbelts, Black velvet cap with silver tassel. Appropriate colours!!

Miss Auriol V Sinclair - Chocolate and buff quartered, sleeves reversed, Black cap.

Re Helen Johnson-Houghton - Gilles de Retz was "trained" by Charles F "de" Jerdein (Scarlet and white stripes, white sleeves, Black cap) and ran in the colours of A G Samuel (Cerise, White seams and hooped cap).

I think Mrs Johnson-Houghtons own colours were buff with blue sleeves and an orange cap, identical to Fulke J-H's except that his had a mauve cap.

British Pathe: Woman wins right to train horses

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/woman-wins-training-rights

Memories of a golden day in 1937

By Neil Clark 30 May 2007 telegraph.co.uk

Seventy years ago this week, Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister, Mrs Simpson married Edward Windsor and, on a warm, sunny day on Epsom Downs, a piece of horse racing history was made. A handsome colt named Mid-day Sun strode home to land the Derby by one and a half lengths, making Mrs Lettice Miller the first woman owner ever to win the Derby at Epsom. That wasn't the only record broken that day: at 28, Mrs Miller, (who owned the horse in partnership with her mother), was also the youngest winning owner of Flat racing's most prestigious prize. Seventy years on, the wheel has turned full circle and Mrs Miller is now the oldest surviving winning owner of the great race. A charming, self-effacing lady, with a razor sharp mind, Mrs Miller lives in a secluded corner of North Dorset with her daughter Blanche, a breeder of Connemara ponies.
"I remember driving to Epsom in a great state of excitement with my mother," she recalled. "We went to the trainer's stand and stood next to Fred Butters, our trainer. He was saying: "He's coming, he's coming," and then he said, "he'll win." My mother and I quietly had a fit. Of course it was all a great excitement after that. The second horse, Sandsprite, was also owned (and unofficially trained) by a woman, Florence Nagle - she was a wonderful person who did so much for racing."
While delighted by the result, Miller, by nature shy and retiring, did not greatly enjoy the media hullabaloo which followed the race. "The publicity afterwards was rather frightening and I didn't know how to handle it. I was invited to do television, which then was just starting, but I decided against it. Journalists rather got on one's nerves."
Dealing with the enormous mailbag her Derby win generated was another headache. "I can't tell you the begging letters I got. I ought to have had a secretary for a week or so. I struggled to answer every one and I don't think my desk has ever been tidy since that day!" One letter Mrs Miller was received was from the Suffragettes. "They wrote in a disagreeable way to say how unkind and shabby it was that the King did not invite me to the Derby dinner. But of course, had they known, it was the most tactful thing he could have done. I would have been the only woman in the room- it would have been very trying for me."
Miller and her mother received the grand sum of £8,941 for winning the big race, but it represented no financial bonanza. "The tradition was that you had to make a very big contribution to the hospital and pay for the wine at the Derby lunch and an awful lot of other things. So after that there wasn't too much left. In those days you never even got a cup which
was so frightfully disappointing. But I did receive a most gorgeous box of chocolates in my colours from Fortnum and Mason's!"
What was all the more remarkable about the success was that Mid-day Sun was only her fourth horse, and her only horse in training at the time. "My mother and I rented Heath House Stables in Newmarket a few years earlier and Fred Butters had the stables next door. He was a particularly nice man and he would let us go round evening stables."
Butters bought and trained a filly called Ankaret for the two ladies, who was successful in the Coronation Stakes at Ascot and only beaten in the very last stride of the 1935 Oaks. Encouraged by their success, Mrs Miller and her mother asked Butters to buy them a yearling colt that might be good enough to run in the Classics, with a price limit of 2,000 gns. Butters bought a colt and Lettice Miller named him Mid-day Sun. "The name just came to me."
Mid-day Sun only won once from eight starts as a two-year-old. But a promising third in the 2,000 Guineas, followed by a victory in the Derby Trial at Lingfield showed clearly that the horse had improved as a three-year-old.
On the day of the Derby, Mid-day Sun started eighth in the betting at odds of 100-7. Lettice Miller remembers she "bet 10 shillings each-way", but she was not the only one to show confidence: it was reported that Queen Elizabeth wagered £1 on Mid-day Sun in the hope that victory would go to a woman owner for the first time in Epsom Derby history.
There were some nice coincidence about the famous day. "Ages afterwards, a woman told me she had a son at mid-day on Derby Day - she was in a nursing home and sent the nurse out to put some money on Mid-day Sun," Lettice said.
Mid-day Sun was no one-race wonder: he followed Epsom with another success at Royal Ascot. But his season ended with a controversial defeat when 3-1 favourite for the St Leger. "The rumour was that Michael Beary was so unpopular with the other jockeys that they weren't going to let him win. Whether that's true I don't know, but I don't think any of the other jockeys liked him and I wouldn't like to say why." For Miller, her annus mirabilis would have a sad aftermath. "My mother died the following year, and dying so soon after the Derby rather took the spark out of racing for me. It was sad that her father never lived to see our win - he loved his racing. It was Coronation year in 1937and I sometimes think it would have been more appropriate had someone like Lord Derby won the race rather than us," she adds with modesty. "We flashed across the sky for one season and then disappeared"

Priscilla Hastings: Racing trainer who bridged the gender gap in her sport

BY SUE MONTGOMERY   SATURDAY 04 SEPTEMBER 2010 independent.co.uk


There was a reminder of two of the sport of horse racing's stereotypes with the recent death of Priscilla Hastings at the age of 90: firstly, its misogynist tendencies, and secondly the importance of a good pedigree.

And in both instances, there is a neat twist to the tale that pleased the grand old lady mightily.

Priscilla Hastings was, as recently as 1977, one of the first three women to be elected as a member of the Jockey Club, then the ruling body of British racing. She, her half-sister Ruth, Countess of Halifax, and Helen Johnson Houghton breached an all-male bastion that had stood for 225 years.

But the Jockey Club had always been slow to move with the times, introducing reforms fitfully and usually belatedly. It was 1966 before women were allowed to hold a licence to train horses, 1972 before they were allowed to ride on the Flat and 1976 over jumps. The ruling about training, forced on the Jockey Club by the High Court, came too late for Johnson Houghton, who had had to saddle her 1956 2,000 Guineas winner under the name of her stable's head man, Charles Jerdein.

Hastings, who later also held a prominent position in another male stronghold as only the second female director of the Tote, in which role she served for six years from 1984, was entitled to be a force in racing. Her maternal grandfather was the 17th Earl of Derby, one of the most influential figures in Turf history, as an owner, breeder and administrator. His only child to survive, Lady Victoria Stanley, had a relatively brief life though significant in racing terms life. Her first marriage, in 1915, was to the 5th Earl Rosebery; before his death two years later serving in Palestine they had a daughter, Ruth, who died in 1989. Lady Victoria's second marriage, in 1919, was to Sir Malcolm Bullock; their daughter Priscilla was born in 1920. Seven years later Lady Victoria was killed in an accident while out hunting with the Quorn.

In 1947 Priscilla married Peter Hastings, a man from another great aristocratic racing and sporting dynasty. His father Aubrey, third son of the 13th Earl of Huntingdon, had trained four Grand National winners and rode the first, Ascetic's Silver in 1906, himself.

In the early 1950s Hastings acquired both a second surname and his own training establishment. His wealthy uncle by marriage, Sir William Bass (one-time owner of the legendary race mare Sceptre) had no direct male heir and left him his fortune on the condition that he kept the family name going. Hastings became Hastings-Bass by deed poll and although Priscilla, at her own insistence, remained plain Hastings, the couple's children Emma, William, John and Simon took the double-barrel.

The Bass legacy facilitated the purchase in 1953 of the famous Kingsclere estate, 1,500 acres near Newbury. Hastings-Bass's tenure was tragically short – he died in 1964 of cancer at 42, the same age at which his own father had died from a heart attack after a game of polo – but highly successful. One of his most notable victories came with King's Troop, who carried his wife's black and yellow colours when he beat 38 rivals in the 1961 Hunt Cup at Royal Ascot.

Priscilla had held the reins at Kingsclere during Hasting-Bass's last illness and became a rock behind the scenes after the licence was taken over by the yard's young assistant Ian Balding, who had inherited some of the sport's most significant owners, including the Queen. Balding's career blossomed and he became family, marrying Priscilla's daughter Emma. Priscilla ran the Kingsclere stud operation; King's Troop was home-bred, as were two more Royal Ascot winners in Murrayfield, who won the Coventry Stakes as a two-year-old before finishing in the frame in the 2,000 Guineas, and handicapper Sharavogue.

Priscilla was chairman and a long-time director of her local racecourse, Newbury, where she had one of her biggest successes as an owner. Taxidermist, whom she shared with Cath Walwyn, wife of the trainer Fulke, won the 1958 Hennessy Gold Cup by a short head from the Gold Cup winner Kerstin, having also won the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown earlier that year. Hastings' last visit to a racecourse was to Newbury, for the Hennessy Gold Cup meeting in November last year, and the day after her death her colours were carried into third place at the Berkshire track by Cool Strike.

The Jockey Club, incidentally, no longer runs racing, having seceded governance and regulation to the newly-formed British Horseracing Authority four years ago. It is now a commercial and welfare operation, but before she died Hastings was one of only 23 female members (including Johnson Houghton) among 150.

Hastings took a keen interest and pride in the achievements of her Balding grandchildren Andrew, who now holds the licence at Kingsclere, and Clare, one of the country's most successful broadcasters, not only in racing and general sport but in wider fields. In her profession, Clare has breached what would previously have been regarded as male strongholds, a particular source of pleasure for her strong-minded grandmother.

Priscilla Victoria Bullock, racing trainer: born 28 February 1920; Director, Tote 1984-90; married 1947 Peter Hastings (later Hastings-Bass; died 1964; three sons, one daughter); died Kingsclere, Berkshire 12 August 2010.

How times change,though even in the 60s the Jockey Club were particularly backward. ( Surprise.surprise ). The argument as I remember it was that women were such weak,easily-led creatures that,although themselves not given to evil-doing,were all too likely to fall under the influence of the kind of men who were. The logic of this apparently meant the Jockey Club considered that all the men who held training licences in 1966 were as straight as a die. Hmmmmm.
Of course I realise there will be forumites who still consider the Jockey Club's stance to have been perfectly correct.

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As a young man I was at Ascot when Ile de bourbon won KG & QE Dianond Stakes. Was a fan of the Johnson houghtons from that day.

, which they bought from Francis Cobb, who had once taken his hunter to Aintree and jumped him round the course at dusk after the Grand National had been run.

the good old days when racing was for  toffs and "sporting gentlemen"

According to John Randall's obit in the Post yesterday, the hunting accident that killed her husband involved him being thrown from his horse into the path of an oncoming lorry. Helen and her children were there and saw it happen