The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-25 00:00:00

SPORTS AT CROYDON.

The late steeplechase meeting at Croydon must have
been a treat of an exceptionally high order to those who
had the good fortune to witness the sport. In the first
place, the frost put off part of the racing for several
days. The great International Metropolitan Steeple-
chase was contended for by the sensational field of
three horses, the jockeys on the two first went on the
wrong side of a post towards the finish, and the
last horse (which pulled up lame) was accordingly
first. This model sport was carried on under peculiar
circumstances. Welshers and roughs, says one eye-
witness, roamed rampant all over the place for
the outlay of a shilling a head. The racecourse
was covered with booths occupied by men who were
vociferating their eagerness to bet against horses
which had been scratched days before, and some of
which were at the time hundreds of miles away from
Croydon. Many young men from the country were
thus taken in ; but they could get no redress, for the
bets were made outside the ring. But finer things
still were done at the railway station. The eye
witness tells us that the distinction between classes
of carriages was abolished. The crowds rushed
wherever they could find a seat
on endeavouring to enter a third-class carriage, found
myself at once attended to by some six or eight fellows,
who put me through a process which,l am told, is by them
styled " rampling" a man. Three or four of them tugged
at my outer coat till they nearly tore it off my back, and
one or two of them thrust their hands into my various
pockets. Understanding what was being attempted, I
jumped back off the step into the middle of them and
saved my purse. I saw a gentleman who was getting into
a first-class carriage being treated in the manner in which
I had-been. I was told by a man who came into the car-
riage in which I eventually got a seat, that he had just
quitted a compartment in which one of the company was
exhibiting to his fellow travellers a watch which he said
he was " taking care of" for a gentleman.

It is added that there was a respectable police
foico on the rn,oecourac and at the station.

MARRIAGE LAW IN AMERICA.

The Richardson scandal may probably do good by
stimulating public attention to the marriage law in
the United States. At present matrimonial contracts
are a State and not a Federal concern—that is, each
individual State makes its own regulations on the
subject. The result is that the practice of dillbrent
portions of the Union varies very materially, and much
confusion and scandal aro caused. At present aiN ew
Yorker who gets an Indiana divorce and remarries
is guilty of bigamy in his own State, and the children
of the second marriage are illegitimate. Indeed, these
Indiana divorces are as bad as the scandalous doings
in France at the close of the last century. The corres-
pondent of the Daily News testifies that not only are
they granted for mere incompatibility of temper at
the suit of persons who have been one year resident
in the State, but they are granted without other
notice to the defendant than the publication of a
summons in one of the State newspapers.
Now, the Indiana newspapers are not re-
markable in any way, and rarely find their
way over the State border, except to news-rooms,
and consequently a million divorces might be granted
in the State within a year without anybody outside
its limits knowing of it. The result has been that
what may be called a great divorce trade has grown
up in it ; hundreds of lawyers there, having their
agents and correspondents all over the country, devote
themselves almost exclusively to thi3 branch of busi-
ness, procuring divorces for all corners with secrecy
and despatch. Cases of persons being divorced with-
out their knowing it are of constant occurrence.