Little Man

In the charity ward of a Los Angeles hospital last week lay a wrinkled little man with sparse grey hair combed straight back. The habitual frightened look of the sick poor dropped from his wizened face as newshawks approached. "Hell!" snapped the little man. "There's nothing wrong with me. Be out of here in a week." But reporters knew that, perhaps for the last time, they were seeing and hearing James Todhunter ("Tod") Sloan, great jockey, famed rounder, spender, one-time friend of millionaires and occasional toast of royalty.

Todhunter was not his name. The Kokomo, Ind. barber who was his father used to call him "Toad." By the time he was a stable boy at Guttenberg, N. J. James Sloan's hard little fists had changed the offensive nickname to "Tod." When in 1900 he returned from England to the U. S. with a secretary, a valet, ten trunks, a monocle and an English accent, open-mouthed newshawks asked what "Tod" meant. Replied he: "Todhunter."

That was the peak of Jockey Sloan's parabolic career. He had gone to England in 1898, dumfounded the crowds at Newmarket by gluing his small frame monkey-like to his mount's neck instead of perching high in the saddle. In the next two years he booted in 63 winners in 151 races, mostly for the late Lord Beresford. He saw English jockeys copy his "American style." He was exhibited to Mayfair drawing rooms, wore the silks of Edward of Wales, heard the future King shout from the royal box: "Well ridden, Sloan!"

Such was Sloan's prowess that when the late William Collins Whitney in 1900 determined to beat his Wall Street rival, the late James R. Keene, in the Futurity at Sheepshead Bay at any cost, he sent to England for Tod Sloan. It cost him the traveling expenses of the jockey and his absurd retinue, plus a reputed fee of $25,000. Astride Financier Whitney's Ballyhoo Bey, Sloan won a masterful race, quickly returned to his glories abroad. His downfall came when the English Jockey Club revoked his license on charges that he had bet on his own races. U. S. racing associations respectfully upheld the English action, unhorsed Jockey Sloan at home.

Tod Sloan still had barrels of money. He spent it with enormous gusto on a Sheepshead Bay mansion, a yacht, roulette, dice, loud clothes, parties at Shanley's, Rector's, Delmonico's. In 1907 he married Musicomedienne Julia Sanderson who divorced him a year later. Most of his fortune vanished in Wall Street because he attempted to "play" along with the rich men for whom he had ridden.

For some 15 years Tod Sloan has been broke. His third wife and daughter Anna, 10, have long been cared for by Mrs. J. P. Cudahy of the packing family. Now and then he picked up a little money as a racetrack tipster, a baseball umpire, a film extra. Once he and his good friend "Kid McCoy," oldtime prizefighter and ex-convict, were in such straits that McCoy wheedled climes from a street crowd to view "the strangest dwarf in the world." When he showed them Sloan, McCoy explained: "I bet you never saw such a big dwarf in your life."

Fortnight ago Tod Sloan was hospitalized with cirrhosis of the liver. Doctors said it was his end.

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