This artful trick has been often practised since

This artful trick has been often practised since

This artful trick has been often practised since, if not earlier than that time, at dog-trailssuccessfully on more than one occasion by the late Richard Gelderd of Ulverston, a keen dog-trailer. He had a "Standback," and at the Flan and other neighbouring sports, was trained to rush forward to the winning post, when the crowd were ordered in a stentorian voice: "Standback! Standback! an' let t' dogs cum incan't ye!"

At the great northern fight, between Carter and Oliver, at Gretna, in 1816, John Slack of Carlisle, shoemaker, then a young man in his teens, was thrown to the ground by the surging of the immense crowd, and might easily have been trampled to death. Seeing the impending danger, Tom Todd, and John Barnes, the constable, both powerful men, elbowed their way through the crowd, and succeeded in rescuing the fallen man, before he was seriously injured. On lifting him from the ground, Todd exclaimed, "Marcy, Jwohn! is that thee? My faiks! but thoo'd a narrow squeak for thy life theear!"

Source: Wrestlings and Wrestlers