Born in Old Chesterton, Cambridgeshire on September 24, 1837, George Fordham was a force majeure in British Flat racing in the second half of the nineteenth century. All told, he was Champion Jockey 14 times in the 17-year period between 1855 and 1871, including the final title that he shared with Charlie Maidment in 1871. When he retired from the saddle, for the second and final time, in 1884, he had ridden a total of 2,587 winners, including 14 British Classic winners.
Indeed, over a century and a quarter after his death, on October 12, 1887, Fordham remains the most successful jockey in the history of the 1,000 Guineas, having won the first fillies’ Classic of the season a total of seven times, on Mayonnaise (1859), Nemesis (1861), Siberia (1865), Formosa (1868), Scottish Queen (1869), Thebais (1881) and Hauteur (1883). He also won the Oaks five times, the 2,000 Guineas three times and, famously, his one and only Derby – having recovered from alcoholism and near bankruptcy – on St Bevys, owned by Lionel de Rothschild, in 1879, at the age of 41.
Fordham had just turned 14 when he rode his first winner, Hampton, for Lewes-based trainer Richard Drewitt, in the Trial Stakes at Brighton in October 1851. However, he first received wider attention when, in 1853, he rode Little David to a wide-margin victory in the Cambridgeshire Handicap at Newmarket. The following season, Fordham won the Chester Cup, or the Chester Tradesman’s Cup, as the race was known at the time, on Epaminondas, owned by Captain Douglas Lane, and the one after that, 1855, won his first jockeys’ title with a relativelylow seasonal total of 70 winners.
Popularly known as ‘Demon’ because of his success, Fordham was, nonetheless, a handsome, modest and good-natured, renowned for his scrupulous honesty and aversion to gambling. Failing health forced his first retirement in 1875, but he returned to the saddle to win the sforementioned Derby in 1879 and rode the best part of another 500 winners vefore hanging up his boots for good.
