# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Astley, John Dugdale

​ASTLEY, Sir JOHN DUGDALE (1828–1894), the sporting baronet, a descendant of Thomas de Astley, who was slain at Evesham in 1265, and of Sir Jacob Astley, lord Astley [q. v.], was the eldest son of Sir Francis Dugdale Astley (1805–1873), second baronet (of the 1821 creation), of Everleigh, near Marlborough, by Emma Dorothea {d. 1872), daughter of Sir Thomas Buckler Lethbridge. Born at Rome in a house on the Pincian Hill, on 19 Feb. 1828, John was educated at Winchester and Eton, and matriculated as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, on 4 June 1846. About a year later, by the pressing advice ​of the dean, he went down from Oxford, heavily in debt, and in September 1847 was sent to study the French language at Clarens in Switzerland, where he amused himself by shooting gelinottes on the mountains.
In March 1848 he was gazetted ensign of the Scots fusiliers, and for the next few years his diary is full of his diversions in the shape of racing, cricket, boxing, punting, and running, he himself being a first-rate sprinter at 150 yards. In 1849 he travelled to Gibraltar overland by way of Seville, where he witnessed the commencement of a bull fight with disgust, and Madrid, where he endeavoured to get up a running match. In February 1854 he sailed for the Crimea with his battalion in the Simoom, took an active part in the battle of the Alma, was rather severely wounded in the neck, and invalided home. In April 1855 he again volunteered for active service, and he gives a frankly humorous account of the conflicting motives that prompted him to take this step. He reached Balaclava in May, was made a brevet-major, and was relegated for the greater part of the time to hospital duty in the town. At Balaclava he became celebrated as a promoter of sport throughout the three armies, French, English, and Sardines, as he designates the Italian troops. On his return he was promoted to a captaincy without examination, and subsequently became a lieutenant-colonel on the retired list. He obtained the Crimean medal with two clasps and the Turkish order of the Medjidie.
On 22 May 1858 Astley married Eleanor Blanche Mary, only child and heiress of Thomas G. Corbet (d. 1868) of Elsham Hall, Brigg, a well-known Lincolnshire squire. His wedding trip was on the point of coming to a premature conclusion at Paris when he opportunely won 1,500l. on the Liverpool Cup. Quitting the army in the following year, he began to devote himself to racing, the sport which 'in his heart he always loved best,' and with which he was chiefly identified, notwithstanding his fondness for hunting and shooting, and his pronounced predilections for the cinder path and the prize ring. During the lifetime of his father-in-law, who had a horror of the turf, he raced under the borrowed name of Mr. S. Thellusson, training in Drewitt's stable at Lewes, where he learnt by his own experience the difficult art of putting horses together, at which he obtained a proficiency rare among gentlemen. A real horse lover, and probably one of the finest judges of horseflesh in England, he took an intense interest in everything connected with the stable, and knew his animals with 'the intimacy of a tout or a trainer.' In 1869 he was chosen a member of the Jockey Club. About the same time Drewitt retired from his profession, and Astley thenceforth had horses witl^Blanton, Joe Dawson, and other well-known trainers. He owned a number of good horses and won a great many stakes, mainly of the lesser magnitude; he also betted with the greatest freedom and pluck, and was never so happy as when making a match. With his usual candour he admits that he originally took to betting, as he subsequently took to authorship, for the purpose of 'diminishing the deficit' at his bankers'. In all, during twenty-six years, he won by betting 28,968l., but he did not put by his winnings, and at the end of that time was, he informs us with frank composure, 'dead broke.' While the turf remained his business amusement Astley had still plenty of time to devote to other forms of sport. He describes the Sayers and Heenan prize fight of 17 April 1860 with the gusto of a connoisseur, and he moralises in an impressive way upon the degeneracy of later gladiators, whose exhibitions he nevertheless continued to patronise until the end of his life. In 1875 he made the acquaintance of Captain Webb, the Channel hero, and arranged several swimming tournaments for his benefit. In April 1877 he matched E. P. Weston, the celebrated American pedestrian, against Dan O'Leary in a walking match of 142 hours for 500l. a side. O'Leary won, as he admiringly records, by sheer pluck, covering 520 miles in the allotted time, and beating Weston by ten miles. He arranged a number of similar contests, and was barely recouped by the gate money.
Astley succeeded to the baronetcy on 23 July 1873 ; he became a J.P. for Lincolnshire and Wiltshire, and in 1874 he was returned to parliament for North Lincolnshire in the conservative interest, but lost his seat in the general election of 1880. He died at 7 Park Place, St. James's Street, on 10 Oct, 1894, and was buried on 16 Oct. at Elsham, his death evoking expressions of regret from the whole sporting community in England. He left issue — Sir Francis Edmund George Astley-Corbet, the fourth and present baronet, three other sons, and four daughters.
Sir John Astley published a few months before his death 'Fifty Years of my Life in the World of Sport at Home and Abroad' (London, 2 vols. 8vo), which contains four portraits of 'The Mate,' as Astley was known among his associates, and was dedi​cated by permission to the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII). Written in a breezy style, abounding in slang, these memories disarm the critic by their frankness no less than by the complete sans gene of the narrator, whose gambling propensity appears throughout as indomitable as his pluck. The book went rapidly through three editions, and was described by the 'Saturday Review' as 'the sporting memoir of the century,'
[Times, 16 and 17 Oct. 1894; Foster's Alumni Oxen. 1715-1886; Burke's Peerage; Debrett's Baronetage: Saturday Review, 9 June 1894; Field, 20 Oct. 1894; Land and Water, 20 Oct. 1894; Astley's Fifty Years of my Life, 1894.]
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