On 26th April 1721 the Duke of Devonshire’s Childers beat the Duke of Bolton’s Speedwell in a match over four miles for 500 guineas (£105,000 in today’s money) on Newmarket Heath. Three hundred and five years later, almost to the day, the National Horseracing Museum has put on display a portrait of Childers by John Wootton together with portraits of the Bloody Shouldered Arabian and Ashridge Ball. The three paintings came from the collection of the former Chairman of the Museum’s Trustees, Lord Fairhaven and were offered to the Museum under the Government’s Acceptance in Lieu Scheme that is managed by the Arts Council.
Childers was the pre-eminent racehorse of his day. In a short career Childers built such a reputation for speed that he has been known as Flying Childers ever since. He raced on the racecourse only three times. In October 1722, he beat Lord Drogheda’s Chaunter in a match for 1000 guineas over six miles. The third race is not dated but is recorded later in Pond’s 1751 Sporting Kalendar. The race was a Trial Match against Almanzor and Brown Betty on the Round Course at Newmarket. Childers kept them company for two miles and then left them. The Dukes of Devonshire and Rutland timed him at six minutes forty-eight seconds over the three miles six furlongs course.
In addition to these races, Childers ran in a trial on 10th May 1722 when he carried 9 stone to beat the Duke of Rutland’s Fox, carrying 8st over the Long Course at Newmarket by ‘a distance and a half’ (310 yards). Fox (born 1714) raced between 1719 and 1723 and was a significant racehorse. He had beaten the Duke of Wharton’s Stripling ‘for a considerable sum’ and won three King’s Plates.
William Pick in his Turf Register (1803) reported that Flying Childers ‘was allowed by Sportsmen to be the fleetest horse that ever ran at Newmarket, or, as generally believed, was ever bred in the world’. To support this argument, Pick said ‘that he moved 82 feet and a half in one second of time, which is nearly at the rate of one mile in a minute’. This claim of 60 miles an hour is easily rejected. However, assuming reasonable accuracy in measuring time and distance in the 18th century, Flying Childers covered the Round Course at 33.55 miles an hour. This is the same as the average speed of the Ascot Gold Cup winner over the shorter distance (2m 4f) from 1951 to 2023.
Flying Childers retired to the Duke of Devonshire’s stud at Chatsworth. He was a successful sire producing amongst others Blacklegs and Blaze, who were to become leading sires. However, his performance at stud was eclipsed by his unraced full-brother Bartlett’s, or Bleeding Childers. He acquired the sobriquet ‘Bleeding’ because he frequently bled through the nose. Bleeding Childers sired Squirt, who in turn produced Marske, the sire of Eclipse. It is through Eclipse that 95% of all today’s thoroughbreds are descended in the male line.
