John was born at Tillerby in County Durham in 1812 and spent much of his life in Durham and Northumberland before moving south. He and his sons are credited with training Wild Dayrell, winner of the 1855 Derby.
Standing over 16 hands high, Wild Dayrell was bred and owned by Francis Popham at Littlecote House just outside Chilton Foliat, Wiltshire. (The horse had been named after a local murderer whose victim’s ghost was said to haunt Littlecote.)
Popham sold a share in Wild Dayrell to Lord Craven, who then moved the horse to his estate, Ashdown Park, Oxfordshire. John Rickaby, working at that time for Popham, was asked to supervise the horse’s training and did so on the Ashdown gallops. Rickaby knew his job and, after winning its first race in a canter at Newmarket, the horse was made favourite for the following year’s Derby.
Such was the amount that bookmakers stood to lose that Popham was offered £5,000 to withdraw him from the Derby. He refused, and on May 27, 1855, Wild Dayrell, the even money favourite and ridden by Robert Sherwood, won in a canter.
Popham held a huge celebration at The Three Swans in Hungerford and John was rewarded with a fine silver tankard. He was later in charge of Wild Dayrell at stud and he himself bred a few foals by him.
By 1871 he appears to have been living separately from his family at Chapel Street, Mayfair. In 1881, by now in his late 60s, he was residing in Newmarket as a ‘horse trainer out of employment’. He died in the spring of 1892, aged 79.
One of his sons, also named John, was born at Hurworth in Northumberland and became a jockey in Lambourn, France and Newmarket. John Jnr died on July 8, 1892, aged 50, just a couple of months after his father. He was the father of Frederick Edward Rickaby.
Additional information sourced from ‘A Biographical Dictionary of Racehorse Trainers in Berkshire 1850-1939’ by David Boyd, published in 1998.