English Derby

The sun was shining. King George, Queen Mary and Edward of Wales sat in a box. Captain Charles Augustus Lindbergh and his host, Lord Lonsdale, sat in another. A man with a megaphone at a crossroad was announcing the second coming of the Lord and flaying gambling. Approximately every fifth person in Great Britain was gambling. A dentist's assistant in Capetown, South Africa, had a valuable slip of paper in his pocket. Some 300,000 people were watching 23 horses. It was Derby Day at Epsom Downs, where hills scallop the landscape and a dimple among them makes a natural bowl for a race course.

The horses began to run; the people began to shout. Captain Lindbergh did not shout, but he could see that one horse took the lead at the start and held it until he crossed the finish line, a winner. This horse was the favorite, Call Boy.*

He had covered the mile and a half in 2 min., 34 2/5 sec., had established a new record for the English Derby on the Epsom Downs course. Two lengths behind Call Boy's nose finished Sir Victor Bassoon's Hot Night.

Call Boy brought a sum on the fat side cf a quarter-million dollars to his owner, Frank Curzon, London theatrical manager, onetime actor. Another onetime roving actor, William Kilpatrick, 40, who had settled down as a dentist's assistant in Africa, held Call Boy's ticket in the Calcutta sweepstakes. It paid $814,800.* Cautious Mr. Kilpatiick had sold half of his ticket to a syndicate for $50,000, so his personal profit was only $457,400. William Jones, 60, retired clerk living peacefully at Felixtowe, won the Stock Exchange sweepstakes of $363,750 after selling three-quarters of his ticket.

*Son of Hurry On" and half-brother of Captain Cuttle and Coronach--all of them Derby winners in recent years.

*Sweepstakes are virtual lotteries. Hundreds of thousands of prices tickets are sold, all numbered, at prices seldom above -L-1 ($5). The total ticket sale, less operator's percentage, is the prize money. Numbers are drawn for the horses entered in the race. The vast majority of ticketholders, failing to "draw a horse" lose their bets. The dozen or so lucky subscribers can sell shares in their tickets for large sums, thus profiting certainly before the horses have won, lost or failed to run.