Peter Gilpin

{{Short description|Irish racehorse trainer}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

File:Peter Purcell Gilpin, Vanity Fair, 1908-01-01.jpg in Vanity Fair in 1908.]]

Peter Valentine Purcell Gilpin (né Purcell; 12 December 1858 – 9 November 1929), known as P. P. Gilpin, was an Irish racehorse trainer. He was Champion Trainer in 1904 and his most notable winner was the filly Pretty Polly who won the Fillies Triple Crown in 1904. He also trained Comrade, the winner of the inaugural Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in 1920.{{cite book |last=Wright|first=Howard|title=The Encyclopedia of Flat Racing|year=1986|publisher=Robert Hale|isbn=0-7090-2639-0|pages=106–107}}

He was born in 1858 at Pau, France,{{cite news |title=Births. |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000056/18581221/009/0003 |access-date=14 October 2024 |work=Freeman's Journal |date=21 December 1858 |page=3}} the son of Capt. Peter Valentine Purcell of Halverstown, Carragh, County Kildare, and Agnes Maria Lethbridge, daughter of Sir John Lethbridge, 3rd Baronet.{{cite book |title= Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood|publisher=Burke's Peerage & Gentry |editor= Mosley, Charles |editor-link=Charles Mosley (genealogist) |edition=107 |year= 2003 |page= 2310|ref=Burke |isbn=0-9711966-2-1}} He was Roman Catholic. His father died in 1864 and his mother remarried in 1866 Henry St. John Vaughan Thomas-Le-Marchant.{{cite book |title=Debrett's illustrated baronetage and knightage (and companionage) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland |date=1880 |page=273 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VNsNAAAAQAAJ&dq=Agnes+Maria,+1854,+Capt.+Peter+Valentine+Purcell&pg=RA1-PA273 |access-date=14 October 2024 |language=en}}

He was educated at Prior Park College, Bath.{{cite journal |last1=Watson |first1=Alfred Edward Thomas |title=Mr. Peter Purcell Gilpin |journal=Badminton Magazine of Sports and Pastimes |date=October 1907 |volume=25 |issue=147 |pages=355–372 |access-date=14 October 2024 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ntFj2OQ9xvQC&pg=PA355 |ref=Watson |publisher=Longmans, Green, and Company |language=en}}

In 1883, he married Amy Mary Louisa, daughter of Capt. Henry Meux-Smith.{{cite book |last1=Addison |first1=Henry Robert |last2=Oakes |first2=Charles Henry |last3=Lawson |first3=William John |last4=Sladen |first4=Douglas Brooke Wheelton |title=Who's who |date=1910 |publisher=A. & C. Black |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MPk-AQAAMAAJ&dq=Amy+Mary+Louisa+Meux+Smith&pg=PA747 |access-date=14 October 2024 |language=en}} He and his wife adopted the surname Gilpin as a condition of her inheriting the entailed Hockliffe Grange estate from her uncle Sir Richard Gilpin, 1st Baronet.{{cite book |last1=Burke |first1=Bernard |title=The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales |date=1884 |publisher=Wm. Clowes & Sons |page=41 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XtQ2AQAAMAAJ&dq=gilpin&pg=PA7-IA41 |access-date=14 October 2024 |language=en}} In the late 1880s, they left Bedfordshire and settled in Ireland, where he began training racehorses while living at Whiteleas near Kildare.

He died in 1929 in Dunshaughlin, County Meath.{{cite news |title= Death of Mr. P. P. Gilpin |work=The Times |date=10 November 1929 |page=5 }}