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A Day at the Races - Bangalore

A day at the races is not much fun if your mount is insisting on behaving like a crab! Karolie Kathleen Buckley (nee Kemmis) does her best in the Ladies Race but it's not enough to win.

Home movie 1929 7 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales

Overview

Mrs Karolie Kathleen Buckley (nee Kemmis), wife of Lt Col W H Buckley, does her best on horse no. 2 in the Ladies Race but her mount is exhibiting crab-like tendencies - i.e. walking sideways – and so it proves not to be her day. Her husband, a member of the Buckley's Brewery (Llanelli) family, was stationed in India – Karnataka state (then Mysore) - between 1925 and 1929/30 with the 5th Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, a calvalry regiment. He founded the Bangalore Hunt Club.

Lt. Col. William Howell Buckley's son, Lt. Col. William Kemmis Buckley, thought that the racing seen here may have taken place in the state of Madras (now Tamil Nadu) or Madras city (now Chennai), and that the coach and four issuing forth from a colonial mansion at the start of the film may be transporting the Governor of Madras to the races. His father's notebook – in which W H Buckley jotted down brief contents for each reel he shot – suggests Bangalore (now Bengaluru), the capital of Karnataka, as the location for the races.