| Several gentlemen of the cloth made a | | | | forty-first year. Many sensational and exciting |
| considerable bet to skate thirty miles in three | | | | races took place over the intervening and |
| hours on the lovely Aqualate Mere belonging to Sir | | | | subsequent years, before enormous crowds, with |
| C. Boughey, Bart, in the presence of most of the | | | | scenes of tumultuous enthusiasm. |
| beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood. They | | | | Although the races amongst the best men were |
| won their bets with ease. | | | | without doubt properly conducted, the press got |
| It is amusing to try and visualise half a dozen | | | | hold of many that were, to say the least, run on |
| parsons, with their black coat tails flying, skating | | | | irregular lines; and it was this that caused a Mr. |
| for money which probably doubled their meager | | | | James Drake Digby, supported by a Dr. Moxon |
| stipends. | | | | and Mr. G. Long and others who were equally |
| Sweepstakes and betting were apparently the | | | | interested in the sporting side of skating, to call a |
| sole incentive to speed amongst amateurs and | | | | meeting to see what could be done to remove |
| professionals alike, in fact, except that the | | | | the all too frequent bad practices. This meeting |
| professionals seem to have been a little faster | | | | was held at the Guildhall, Cambridge, on February |
| one can see no difference. The great winter of | | | | 1st, 1879, and on that day the National Skating |
| the Crimean war, 1854, gave an enormous | | | | Association of Great Britain was born. A further |
| impetus to skating and it was in this winter that | | | | meeting was held on March 1st, when the Duke |
| William Smart, best known as Turkey, came to | | | | of Devonshire, the Earl of Leicester and Mr. C. W. |
| the fore and dominated speed skating for a | | | | Townley, Lord Lieutenant of Cambridge, were |
| decade. Of all Turkeys rivals, the most formidable | | | | invited to be presidents. It was resolved to |
| was William See, known as Gutta Percha, but it | | | | establish a Skating Championship of England, and |
| was not until 1867 that he succeeded in lowering | | | | generally to promote the interests of skating. |
| Turkeys colours, when the latter was in his | | | | |