Squire Osbaldeston driving his celebrated Trotter Tom Thumb

This picture derives from the print by H. Pyall, after the original work by Francis Calcroft Turner, published by Ackermann in 1831.

Trotting races developed as a sport at the end of the 18th Century. Tom Thumb was one of two trotters purchased by Osbaldeston from an Englishman living in America. At this period few horses could trot sixteen miles an hour in harness, but Osbaldeston matched Tom Thumb to trot sixteen and a half miles in the hour against his old friend George Payne, before huge crowds, on the Cambridge-Royston road and completed the distance with eight or nine minutes to spare.