Stainsby, Edward 'Rabbi' - The Heanor Racer

Edward 'Rabbi' Stainsby depicted as a street-hawker in about 1870, when his all-conquering days as a noted runner were behind him.

EDWARD 'RABBI' STAINSBY was born in Heanor on 11 January 1825. Blessed with remarkable powers of endurance and unmatched athletic ability, he became widely known both in Derbyshire and countrywide as 'Rabbi the Heanor foot-racer'.

Stainsby's fine physique set him apart from the vast majority of his more sickly colleagues in the Derbyshire town. By the age of 20 he stood at more than 6ft tall, considered a remarkable height in the mid-19th century. A contemporary account described him as 'a stalwart and muscular fellow, but with a humour of a rather vulgar and degenerative kind, albeit one which keeps his audience often in a roar.'

Had he been born in more recent times he would surely have made the perfect England footballer. Stainsby commenced his working life as a framework knitter, only getting his sporting break by chance. When he was 19, he was asked at a prize race to hold the clothes of a professional who was about to run.

As the starting signal was given, not quite knowing the form, Rabbi began running just ahead of the competitiors so he could be on hand to deliver the clothes to his man at the end of the race. Much to everybody's astonishment, he kept readily abreast of the chasing pack and effortlessly crossed the finish line ahead of the entire field!

The impromptu performance immediately attracted the attention of sporting backers, who put Stainsby into strict training and entered him in the big money professional races which were very much the vogue in the Victorian age. These were akin to horse races in terms of the betting and interest they attracted - huge sums of money were at stake in the world of 'pedestrianism, as 'athletics' was then known.

And the Heanor foot-racer did not disappoint. Stainsby ran his first prize race on Plough Monday 1845, in his home town Heanor, a head-to-head against Tommy Lee of Arnold over a distance of one mile. Stainsby won it, and ran to victory in a further 12 high-profile races in his first year, beating the very best that Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield and Macclesfield could muster.

Nor was he a 'one year wonder' - he kept the punters happy by continuing to win for a further twenty years, until Father Time eventually caught up with him. He ran his last race in 1865, at the age of 40 - after finishing third behind two youngsters it was all he could do to gasp what proved to be his retirement speech: 'Now I know I'm not so young as I used to be.'

His athletics career over, Stainsby returned once more to a life of toil. He was variously a lace-maker, navvy, greengrocer, collier, and itinerant hawker. And he ended his working life as he had begun it, as a framework knitter.

The once unbeatable 'pedestrian' died in Nottingham in 1897, aged 72. To those ignorant of his sporting past he was nothing but an 'old man' from Heanor whose day was done - if only they had known the truth about the all-conquering past of the remarkable Derbyshire athlete.

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