Everything tagged: Racehorse owner

Son of the Macanese businessman Adao Maria de Lourdes Soares, F.M.L. Soares joined the family firm of Soares & Co. but was perhaps best known as a popular young jockey in the 1920s. I have no idea if he is the same Soares, mentioned in R.E. Jones’s war diary of 15 January 1944 as possibly having been executed. I don’t think he is the same as “Ginger” Soares, who was a lawyer. F.M.L. Soares figures in my family history as the jockey who rode the first winner belonging to my grandfather (racing name “Mr Towers”) and in fact the first China pony that my grandfather owned.

Sir Ellis Kadoorie often seems to be ignored or absorbed into the identity of his brother Sir Elly Kadoorie. He is strangely omitted from the list of members of the Sassoon and Kadoorie families in the book I am reading at the moment "Kings of Shanghai" (2020). Sir Ellis was a major public benefactor in Hong Kong and founded the Sir Ellis Kadoorie School in 1891. Together with Sir Paul Chater and Sir Hormusjee Mody, he was one of the three great racing men of the times. Sir Ellis died suddenly on 24 February, 1922 in the middle of a racing week.