McCarten, Maurice Thomas Joseph
(1902–1971)
by Richard Waterhouse
This article was published: in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15, 2000 online in 2006
Maurice Thomas Joseph McCarten (1902-1971), jockey and racehorse-trainer, was born on 17 September 1902 at Hawera, South Taranaki, New Zealand, son of John McCarten, a New Zealand-born groom, and his wife Mary, née O'Neil, from Ireland. Maurice was given trackwork from the age of 9 and apprenticed at 14 to the trainer Fred Tilley. His first winner was Merry Gain in Wellington. In the following years he won almost every major race in New Zealand and headed the jockeys' premiership twice.
In Sydney on 18 August 1923, at his first appearance on an Australian racecourse, McCarten rode three winners at Canterbury; that year he won the first of
