Racing Culture: the Racecourse and Racecourse Life
5 Racing culture: the racecourse and racecourse life hile people could not avoid having views on racing only a minority Wactually attended race-meetings, and it is to the cultural and social life of the racegoing public that we now turn. The anticipatory thrill of travel was important, and a first section deals briefly with changes in travel over the period. A following more substantial section deals with social relationships, behaviour and attendance in relation to social class and gender. Changes and continuities in the comfort and facilities of the course, and in the ancillary activities such as sideshows, food and drink provision, tipsters or bookmakers are next explored, before the chapter concludes with an assessment of the ‘moral panic’ associated with the racecourse crime of the early 1920s. Transport Travel to the races was important to the racing experience. Changes in the domi- nant mode of transport, with their implications for conspicuous display, social interaction, and patterns of accommodation use in the racing towns, form a peripheral but important theme in the social history of racing. As a sport with its roots in rural horse-owning life, racing, and especially steeplechase and point-to- point meetings, still attracted rural dwellers travelling on horseback in the early 1920s, as entrance figures show, although motor enclosures were raising more than twice as much revenue by the later 1920s. Carriages became rare, although the larger four-in-hand coach was to be found occasionally at Epsom for the Derby, at Ascot, or at more prestigious point-to-points. Their continued appeal was partly sentimental.
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