The 'seven deadly sins', also known as the 'capital vices' or 'cardinal sins', is a grouping and classification of vices within Christian teachings. Behaviours or habits are classified under this category if they directly give birth to other immoralities. These sins are said to be contrary to the 'seven virtues'. They are often thought to be abuses or excessive versions of one's natural faculties or passions (for example, gluttony abuses one's desire to eat).

This classification originated with the desert fathers, especially Evagrius Ponticus, who identified seven or eight evil thoughts or spirits that one needed to overcome. Evagrius' pupil John Cassian, with his book The Institutes, brought the classification to Europe, where it became fundamental to Catholic confessional practices as evident in penitential manuals, sermons like "The Parson's Tale" from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and artworks like Dante's Purgatory (where the penitents of Mount Purgatory are depicted as being grouped and penanced according to the worst capital sin they committed). The Catholic Church used the concept of the deadly sins in order to help people curb their inclination towards evil before dire consequences and misdeeds could occur.

On a more perfunctory and down to earth note, there are in fact 9 horse racing courses in Yorkshire and being so inclined to include them all, I am adding to this list, the two extra 'Historical' deadly sins' spoken of by Evagrius, before the later definitions set by Pope Gregory I in AD 590.