I.
Having received the selection of his tipster, or having become enamoured of a horse selected by himself, the bettor proceeds to his club or other rendezvous where he knows he will find a bookmaker ready to lay the odds against the horse of his choice.
In this he finds no difficulty. In large towns and cities, and in smaller seats of population also, there are persons whose business it is to accommodate such customers. Bookmakers and backers have many ways of coming together; they meet at divers times and seasons and in divers places as a matter of course, and during those months when there is little or no horse-racing they keep up acquaintance with each other at billiard matches and in their clubs; indeed, sporting events of some kind on which "a nice little bit of betting" may crop up are always on the tapis, whilst during the winter season there are usually a score or so of steeple-chase meetings which are provocative of speculation in bookmaking and betting circles. The great coursing meetings which take place in the season when racing is pretty much at a standstill also give rise to a vast amount of betting, of which very little is known, because it is not published from day to day.
The enormous extent to which betting on horse-racing goes on all the year round is known to those only who make the matter a special study. It has been computed by persons who should know that not less than five thousand bookmakers are daily engaged throughout the United Kingdom in laying the odds against horses to stakes ranging from sixpence to perhaps, on some occasions, as much as five hundred or even a thousand pounds. Taking it, for illustrative purposes, that each layer of the odds deals only with a hundred customers, it becomes obvious that there must be at least five hundred thousand persons engaged in betting. The exact number, however, could it be ascertained, would doubtless prove much in excess of these figures. Were it said that at present there are over a million persons who take an interest in horse-racing or in some of the other sports and pastimes of the period to the extent of backing their opinions by a bet, it would not probably be an exaggeration.
In one Scottish city there is, it has been calculated, a hundred bookmakers at work every day on the streets or in clubs or offices, doing business with all comers at market rates, and to stakes varying in amount from shillings and half-crowns to "tenners and ponies" (£25). As that city contains a population of over half a million individuals, it affords data for calculating that there may be two hundred bookmakers for each million of the population congregated in the great cities and larger towns of the kingdom, which for London alone would give more than one thousand layers of the odds, whilst Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford, Leeds, and Birmingham, will undoubtedly have a number correspondent to their population. "Here, every one bets," said a London club steward one evening to the writer, whilst busy entering names for the annual Derby sweep, "every one from the City to the West End; the cabman who brought you from the railway station, the porter who took your hat, the man who sold you that copy of the special Standard, all bet, and in hundreds of our public-houses and tobacconists' shops you can find a bookmaker if you want him."
A glance at what takes place in large cities and big provincial towns every day, but more particularly on days set apart for the decision of important races, shows hundreds of people rushing about to interchange their tips and opinions and to learn what is being done. On such days telegraphic messages rain into the more important clubs, of which there are from six to twenty in each of the towns named, and in these places from three to thirty bookmakers will be found ready to bet with all comers.
In these clubs may be seen groups of bettors each with an eye on "the tape," which winds out its automatic lists of the running horses, their jockeys, and the odds at which they are being backed in the ring, followed in due course by the name of the winning and placed horses and that important item of information, the "starting price," so much valued by bettors. As race follows race the same routine is repeated, so that a flutter of excitement is kept up till the programme is exhausted. Winners over the first race take heart and go on speculating, while men who have lost make an effort to retrieve their bad fortune by extending their investments, and thus the game continues till the last race of the day has been decided.
There are men constantly engaged in betting who in their own circles are not suspected of doing so. Some of them do so by the aid of friends who possess a knowledge of the business, others steal into the bookmakers' offices, and looking about them fearful of being observed, whisper their business to the layer of the odds or his clerk. The lame and halt, the blind and dumb, the rich and the ragged, daily rub shoulders in quest of fortune in the betting arena. Men with well-ventilated boots and guiltless of linen under-garments pass their shillings or half-crowns into the jewelled hand of the bookmaker, who at once rattles off an entry to his clerk: "6 to 1 Gold for the Fortunatus Stakes."
A score, perhaps, of such poverty-stricken gamblers could not among them muster clothes of the value of the albert chain and pendant hung from the watch of the bookmaker's penciller.
Racing to-day spreads itself over a wide field, and to witness the decision of such races as the Derby or St. Leger Stakes, the Chester Cup, the City and Suburban Handicap, or the Royal Hunt Cup at Ascot, tens of thousands will assemble between the classes and the masses, each person seemingly more interested than the other. Some are on the scene from pure love of sport, others from their desire to bet, and when a race is decided, especially one of the great handicaps which give rise to so much betting, tens, nay, hundreds of thousands of pounds will have been lost and won, the sum total being of course made up by a vast number of small and many large transactions.
Varied estimates have been formed of the amount annually expended in betting or horse-racing. At the Doncaster St. Leger Meeting, which lasts four days, there will probably be thirty races run, from four to fifteen horses competing in each. To accommodate the persons who bet on these races there will be on the ground not less, all told, than five hundred bookmakers, and assuming that only £20 are drawn by each of them over every race, that would represent a total amount of £300,000 risked on the thirty races run during the four days. An exponent of racing finance said some years ago, in an article contributed to The Edinburgh Review: "Taking it for granted that £1,500 only is risked by bettors on each of the small races run during the season, and that there are say 2,600 such contests, the total will amount to nearly four millions sterling! To that sum must be added the money risked on the larger races. On the popular betting handicaps, such as that run at Lincoln, the City and Suburban, the Royal Hunt Cup, the Northumberland Plate, and several other important racing events, not forgetting the two great Newmarket handicaps of October, quite a million sterling will be represented."
To affirm that a sum of from four to five million pounds is annually risked in bets on horse-races looks like wishing to play on the credulity of the public, but good reasons exist for believing that the amount named is about right, and under rather than over the real total, could it be ascertained. It is still possible to back a horse running in a big handicap to win from twenty to fifty thousand pounds. Roseberry, the property of Mr. James Smith, won both the Cesarewitch and Cambridgeshire in the same year; Mr. Smith taking, it was stated at the time, a sum of over a hundred thousand pounds out of the ring by the victory of his horse. The event was remarkable as being the first occasion on which these two races were won by the same animal. The public benefited largely by the victory of Roseberry; it would be no exaggeration perhaps to say that two hundred thousand pounds would fall to be paid in all, but the bookmakers had of course the sums betted against all the other horses that ran to pay with. There were twenty-nine running in that year's Cesarewitch, all of which were backed at some price or other, the favourite, Woodlands, which started at the odds of 4½ to 1 against its chance, being heavily supported.
There are writers on turf matters who maintain that there is not now so much betting as there used to be, but that contention can only apply to particular races; for, as a matter of fact, there is in reality five times the amount of turf speculation to-day that there was forty or fifty years since. Take Scotland as an example; half a century ago there was no person earning a living by "bookmaking" alone. True, the "lists" have been "put down," but clubs have arisen, where betting, as has been stated, is going on every day and all day long. Races to which the lists applied were, comparatively speaking, seldom on the tapis, although betting on them, it is right to say, began long before the day fixed for the event to be decided, so that bettors were afforded ample opportunities to "back their fancy." Even at present there are books open on the Cesarewitch and the Cambridgeshire months before the horses are entered for them.
The English betting men lately carrying on business in the French towns of Boulogne and Calais betted on these handicaps, as may be said, all the year round. These bookmakers betted with all comers chiefly for ready money, and have been known to lay from five to fifteen thousand pounds against each of two or three of the horses engaged in a popular race. With the daily betting now prevalent, and the occasional spurts which take place over important races held at Manchester, Derby, Leicester, Sandown and Kempton Parks, it may be taken for granted that the amounts involved, so far as totals are concerned, are greatly in excess of what they have ever previously been estimated as being.
Those who maintain that "the betting of to-day is nothing to that of forty years ago," usually cite in proof of their assertion the large sums which were wont to change hands over the Derby, such as the £50,000 won over St. Giles, or the £150,000 that Teddington's victory cost the ring, one of the members of which paid one of his customers a sum of £15,000 the morning after the race. Many reminiscences of big sums lost and won over the Blue Ribbon of the Turf have appeared in print, and also of the amounts won at the lists. These were large, no doubt, but the money as a rule went into few hands. When the big bettors, who had the entrée of Tattersall's, were paid their twos and threes or ten thousand pounds the money was exhausted; but not fewer than twelve or fifteen thousand individuals would probably draw from five to fifty pounds each over Bluegown's victory in London, whilst quite as many persons scattered over the United Kingdom would pocket lesser sums.
That the "small money" expended to-day in betting soon accumulates can be easily proved. Here is one way, for instance, of arriving at an illustration: there are at the present time about twelve thousand public-houses in London, nearly all the frequenters of which take some degree of interest in the Derby or other race, and assuming that each house on the average has two hundred and fifty regular customers, of which one hundred will have a bet on some race of the season, that gives a big figure. Should each person back a horse by even the outlay of a modest half-crown, the total money so invested would sum up to the very handsome amount of something like £150,000, and certainly quite as much would be risked by more daring backers.
In this view of the case it is in vain to tell us that betting is declining, either on the Derby or any other event of turf speculation. The great obstacle to big bets being made is the miserly rate of odds now offered by bookmakers. In the case of Surefoot, that did not win the Derby of 1890, the odds laid on that horse at the start required the investment of £90 to win £40, a luxury that only people with more money than brains were able to afford.
In the turf market the bettors—the backers are here meant—have, of course, the worst of the deal throughout, the money risked finding its way into a very few hands at the end of the chapter. Backers come and backers go day by day, but the bookmaker, who plays a prudent part, holds his place and strengthens his position more and more. Those familiar with the incidents of betting know full well that not one backer of horses in every hundred can live at "the game." Most bookmakers see ninety-nine of their clients go down, many of them with great rapidity, the kind, for example, that come on Tuesday morning and are squeezed out by Friday afternoon. Others prolong the struggle for a time by being able to fight a stronger battle, being, perhaps, more prudent or better provided with capital. Few of those who in any one year begin to back horses with the running of the Lincolnshire Handicap are able to live at the business to the date of the Cambridgeshire, which is the last "great" race of the season.
Every now and again "plungers," as they are called in the slang of the period, make their appearance in the betting rings and carry on their betting with an enormous flourish of trumpets. The financial feats which they perform in backing horses are frequently chronicled by the sporting press, and thus it is we learn that "Mr. Blank" ("the famous plunger" of the period) "had another series of fortune-yielding innings yesterday, having landed over sixteen hundred pounds on the day's racing."
Such good fortune is, however, phenomenal and seldom lasts long; besides, no one takes the trouble to chronicle the many bad days which Mr. Blank is fated to encounter, the outcome of which leads, as a matter of course, to the usual finale. Beginning on the plan of dealing for ready money dealings only, the plunger ultimately does a large business on the usual credit terms of settlement every Monday, and in the course of a few months the racing public learn that the great man has come to grief, and is offering a composition of five shillings in the pound, in order to lighten his liabilities. So it is in time with all who tread the same path, even with those of them who come from the other side of the Atlantic to break the English betting ring, and who for a season look as if they would prove successful.
Many schemes are resorted to by the bigger class of betting men to obtain information. Jockeys are pumped, trainers are interviewed, stablemen are bribed with the view of enabling the plunger to land a big bet or two at every meeting. There are men, of course, who would scorn to take a vulgar money bribe, but who do not scruple to receive a case or two of champagne, or a ten-gallon cask of whisky, nor are they very angry when some energetic person sends their wife a diamond ring or their daughter a gold watch. Upon one occasion while visiting a training establishment, the writer was struck with the display of jewellery which adorned the person of a trainer's wife; probably enough, none of the ladies of those owners who had horses in that man's stables possessed such a valuable collection of gems as she wore on her fingers and bosom, nor did the lady evince much reluctance about giving their history—she was not reticent.
It has from time to time been hinted that the money lost by backers of horses finds its way to a good amount into the coffers of a few turf sharks who are banded together in "a ring," and who have dealings with not a few of the training fraternity as well as with a number of the jockeys. There may be a degree of truth in what has been said by certain newspapers with regard to this mode of conspiracy, but much of this kind of gossip which percolates through the columns of the press is only gossip—not gospel. Even if it were founded on fact it would be difficult to find proof of such misdeeds. Those persons who have the best chances of making money by means of horse-racing are the men who act as go-betweens for jockeys, or for trainers, or for such owners of horses as are also keen betting men. Of late years one or two of this fraternity have come to the front, having proved wonderfully successful at the business and put money in their purses, honestly it is to be hoped. At any rate they have become wealthy, and from being helpers or touts on the training-grounds have "risen," as one gushing writer said about them. In other words, they have now a bank account and enjoy the luxury of clean linen and water-tight boots, which hundreds of men who back their "fancy" cannot hope for.
When the tide of "luck" favours those men who court the smiles of Fortune in racing circles, she seems to lavish her treasures on them with an unsparing hand. There are men now living at Newmarket worth thousands of pounds that ten or twelve years since would have found it difficult to scrape together ten shillings. These are among the men who have "risen," and so dazzled the eyes of some of the gentlemen of the sporting press. When they own a horse or two, as several now do, and one of their animals proves successful in winning a race, they are at once elevated another step, and spoken of by some writers as "the astute Mr. So-and-So," or as Mr. This-and-That, "the clever and intelligent owner" of Cheek and other well-known horses.
During recent years much has been written and said against the system of betting for ready money. Of all the "fads" (the reader is asked to excuse this vulgarism) connected with gambling on the turf that have become prominent during recent years the denunciation of ready money betting is certainly the most extraordinary—the most abused of them all. Ready money betting has been declared illegal. But why should betting in ready money be wrong if betting on credit be right? If any kind of betting be proper it most assuredly should be betting for ready money, than which there ought to be no other kind of betting. The rules of logic were never surely so much set at naught as when it was decreed that betting by means of the payment of ready money—that is to say the depositing of the stakes—should be stigmatised as being illegal. Probably by an interpretation of the law there is no such thing as legal betting; it has hitherto been held that betting of any kind is illegal. Bets are not recoverable at law; but bets made by one party who acts as agent for another party can be sued for, and may be recovered; at any rate the person who instructs an agent to make a bet on his behalf can be sued in a court of law for the amount of the stake. It surely is reasonable to argue that if betting for ready money be bad, betting on credit is worse. Everything points to the probability of betting when it began being for ready money only, and that as a rule stakes on both sides were deposited pending the event to be decided. Why should it not be so to-day?
With the advent of credit betting began the reign of the "blacklegs," the nefarious frauds and swindles, the poisonings and pullings, the watering and watching of horses, with which men who interest themselves in the sport of kings are now so familiar. Judging from the tone of recent legislation, what our parliamentarians are wroth about is, that betting has become a business requiring the intervention of that middle man, the obnoxious "bookmaker," but it is really better that it should be so, if betting on horse-racing is to be allowed to be continued in any shape. Why should men who will never cease to bet so long as horse-racing goes on be driven to bet one with another, which is the worst form of speculation? Who can mention any more humiliating spectacle than that furnished by a "noble" sportsman "doing" his friend over the Derby, or some other race? In reality that is the kind of betting pointed at by some of our turf big-wigs as being the best form of speculation of the kind; to these men the bookmaker is a disgust.
It is earnestly to be hoped, if horse-racing is to endure, in which event there must be betting, that the bookmaker will be permitted to ply his pencil, as also that he will be licensed by the Jockey Club and be authorised to bet for ready money only. The writer of the article in The Edinburgh Review, already referred to, puts the case in favour of ready money in a forcible fashion: "If a man were compelled to deposit his stake every time he made a bet, he would be more cautious in betting. Put me down the odds to a monkey is easy to say, but the monkey (£500) is not so easy to pay if the bet is lost, and were it to pay at the moment the chances are that no monkey would be put down."
Betting between private friends is a horror of the worst description. Think of Major Bobadil laying Ensign Simple 100 to 25 against a horse which he knows will never be started for the race it is being backed to win. In such circumstances what would be a proper designation for Major Bobadil, blackguard or blackleg? It will of course be said, if you go to a bookmaker he possesses the same knowledge, and so he may; but then the bookmaker is neither your mess-fellow nor your private friend. Persons who are determined to bet ought never to bet with a friend, but should invariably resort to the professional bookmaker.
It is not necessary to say much more about this phase of betting, because the arguments against credit and in favour of ready money are so obvious and so strong as not to require voluminous illustration. It is quite certain that if a man were required to table his five, ten, or twenty sovereigns every time he made a bet, betting would speedily diminish, and far less would then be heard of "turf iniquities" and crimes of the turf. When, for instance, a man has betted for a week at Epsom, Ascot, or Newmarket, and fortune has gone against him, he will stick at nothing in order to be able to settle his account, as he may have interests at stake which demand imperatively that Monday shall see his account in process of liquidation. A man would not perhaps deliberately forge or steal to obtain a sum with which to make a ready money bet, but there are circumstances in which he would do so in order to settle his account when he has been betting on what is called "the nod" (credit).
The following is a case in point. A few years ago a man lost a heavy sum. He knew well that on the following Monday he must pay or a fine bet he had of £5,000 to £50 would be at once scratched; the horse backed having in the interval become a great favourite for the race. In such case to settle was imperative, and a settlement was accomplished; how the sum necessary to pay what was due was obtained was never made public, but it became known to several persons that a robbery of jewels, of a suspicious kind, took place at that gentleman's residence on the Saturday night following the decision of the race. A footman was apprehended on suspicion, but his master, saying it could not possibly be he who stole the jewels, declined to prosecute. Happily for the lady whose gems had been purloined, her husband won his big bet, and she was able to shine in a newly bought suite of diamonds.
A history of the rise and progress of betting would be full of interest. It takes two, and occasionally more than two, persons to make a bet, and, as has been indicated in a previous page, in the earlier days of horse-racing the amounts betted on both sides were usually deposited, or in racing argot the money in dispute was "staked," in the hands of a third party till the event betted upon could be decided. No data exists to show when the professional bookmaker as we know him came upon the scene; but it may be taken for granted that the "penciller" was not evolved at once, but that the system grew by means of what it fed on, originating, doubtless, in the practice adopted by certain gentlemen who, having made a series of bets, were anxious in consequence to get "round," as the process of hedging is called, or, in other words, to be in a position not to lose their money, or, to put the matter still more explicitly, to possess a fair chance of winning something and losing nothing. At the beginning of racing, and for a considerable time thereafter, what little betting occurred took place chiefly on the racecourses; but as time elapsed several men distinguished themselves, or, at least, became notorious, as "betting men," both giving and taking the odds all round, and accepting the odium of sometimes being called "legs" (blacklegs) by such persons as only made single bets, and objected to the wholesale modes of betting which were coming into fashion. Before Tattersall's was established as a betting centre, many gentlemen made their bets in the way indicated, namely, among themselves and with one another on the racecourse, or at their clubs and in their houses, and in the more primitive days of sport nearly always staking the amounts betted with a third party. As betting on horse-racing increased in magnitude, both in the number of bets made and the amounts betted, the bookmaker, or professional betting man, became a necessity, and, as usual, demand soon created supply.
Since it originated, the incidence of betting has undergone several changes. About the end of last century it was greatly the fashion to bet on one horse against the field, and that mode of turf speculation was long prevalent, and did not change into the present more extended way of doing business till the present century was well begun. Such betting was indulged in by the owners of race-horses, their humour finding a vent chiefly in arranging matches between their respective animals for sums of money, ranging perhaps from £50 to £5,000 as might be arranged.
The professional bookmakers who first took the field in opposition to the "gentlemen legs," as a few of the layers of the odds were designated, were not, so far as education and manners were concerned, particularly bright; but in consideration of their being prompt to pay when they lost, their defective education and lack of manners were overlooked. Several of the gentlemen who owned race-horses soon discovered that the mere winning of a stake by means of any particular race, however large the sum run for might be, did not reimburse them for the outlays which they had to make by keeping a stud of horses; hence the horse became an instrument of gambling, and remains so at the present time.