Charlie Foy with Major Edwards at Derby Racecourse, September 1907.+

Charlie and Rathlea, winners of the 1912 Chester Cup, return to scale with trainer, Coulthwaite

Charlie unsaddling Hapsburg after their 1914 Eclipse triumph.

Charlie on Bambusa, winner of Sandown's 1914 Produce Stakes. 

Near the end and desperate for funds, Charlie sold the gold-mounted whip presented to him by King George V in honour of a victory, along with the tea service and cigar box bestowed upon him by the Kaiser — treasured tokens of a glittering career, gone to settle the debts of a diminished life.

On Monday, 30 December 1946, Charlie Foy died as he had spent his final years: alone and penniless, in the austere surroundings of the Poor Law Institution Hospital in Penrith. He was 65 years old.

Not long before the end, he reflected on the arc of his fortunes with a quiet, devastating simplicity: 'Once I had money, now I have nothing. But I still go to all the race meetings I can — even if I have to walk there.'

Newmarket October 13 1914

The Champion Stakes.

Charlie rode for five monarchs: King Edward VII, King George V, the Kaiser, the Czar of Russia, and Alfonso XIII of Spain.

He was a familiar figure in the Edwardian world of smart restaurants and champagne suppers. It was not unusual for him to spend the night in a Turkish bath, then arrive for a breakfast of plovers' eggs and champagne before riding in the afternoon.

For a man of Charlie's temperament, it was too good to last. Temptation came, and with it, disaster.

In October 1919, he was declared bankrupt.

Charlie vanished from the world of smart hotels and expensive restaurants. With his money gone, he drifted to race meetings in the North of England — sometimes as a tipster, sometimes as the man who minded racegoers' cars. He carried sandwich boards and took whatever work would earn him a few shillings. Few in the crowds at those northern meetings knew that the man selling tips and handing out mothballs with them was Cornelius Foy.

He fell foul of the law on several occasions. On Tuesday, 23 February 1932, he was sentenced at Nottingham to six months' imprisonment for stealing a mailbag from a van at Nottingham Victoria station on 9 February. He claimed he had done it for a lark, having been drunk at the time — though it was not his first offence. On 5 July 1926, at Newmarket, he had stolen a bicycle.