Willie Croft

William ‘Willie’ Croft was born in Manchester in 1878, the son of a plasterer. His family moved to Sheffield soon after, hence he tended to be referred to as ‘The Sheffield Jockey’.

He was apprenticed to John Dawson Jnr at Newmarket and rode his first winner on Samarcand in an apprentices’ selling plate at Newmarket on April 24, 1894. He achieved his biggest success later that year on Indian Queen in the 1894 Cambridgeshire Handicap.

Sadly, Willie’s time as a jockey was a brief one. He broke a collarbone in a fall on the gallops at Newmarket in the summer of 1896 and that effectively ended his career.

His brother David Croft was also a jockey. He died in August 1917 after contracting a severe illness in Rio de Janeiro in June that year.