Ernest Huxley

(1896 - 1963)


Australian jockey Ernest Patrick Douglas Huxley was born in Randwick, New South Wales on October 18, 1896. He was Britain’s champion apprentice in 1913 with 49 winners.


There were no really big ones but they included the Doncaster Handicap on Bentley, Kempton’s Coventry Welter Handicap on Whimsey, the Criterion Nursery at Newmarket on Wild Arum below), and five winners during Lincoln’s two-day autumn fixture comprising a first-day double and a second-day hat-trick.


He rode three more winners at Doncaster’s two-day November meeting including the Stanley Nursery on Tollendall.


His brother William had been champion apprentice the year before (1912). They were the sons of top Australian jockey Ernest Austin Huxley (1870-1940).


Despite that early success as an apprentice, Ernest did not hold a jockey’s licence after 1915.


He died in August 1963, aged 66, having walked into a London hospital and announced that he had taken 125 aspirin tablets. The Coroner returned a verdict that the former jockey, of no known address, killed himself by aspirin poisoning.