A Mirror of the Turf; Or, The Machinery of Horse-Racing Revealed, Showing the Sport of Kings as It Is To-Day

by James Glass Bertram

VI.

Another phase of the chicanery of the turf may be now alluded to, arising from the mercenary spirit of certain greedy owners—it is the practice of an owner to take a big bet about one of his horses, and leave his "lot" in the hands of a bookmaker to "work" in the market as he pleases. The right of a man to wallop his own nigger has been asserted; in the same spirit there are men who, having accepted in a handicap or other race with four or five horses, claim to do with them as they please, and what this style of doing business leads to can be gathered from the preceding pages. The mode alluded to is a contemptible phase of turf action. In plain language, the owner so acting simply lends himself to a fraud, because the bookmaker, knowing that only the horse which he has laid against is intended to win, takes his measures accordingly, and manages so to bring the others before the public that they will all in turn be well backed by unthinking backers—the horse which is intended to win the race being kept, when possible, carefully in the background, stories about its condition being published which prevent its being noticed. The intended horse may of course be beaten, but the cunning of the transaction is in no way lessened by that fact. It remains that the owner, in conjunction with the bookmaker, tried to do "a bit of thieving," for which, in other circles, he would be written down a blackguard. On the turf, however, morals are not quite so severely measured.

Not a few men are unfortunately compelled to the exercise of such chicanery by the "force of circumstances." There are men now on the turf who, while they are nominally the owners of a stud of race-horses, are in reality slaves of bookmakers. They have at some meeting extended their arm too far, and have been unable in consequence to respond to the call of time. In other words, in expectation of some of the horses they had backed winning, they betted to a greater amount than they found themselves able to pay. In such an ignominious position they frequently become tools of the bookmakers, and run or do not run their horses as they are told by their master, who, although imperative enough in his demands, may be a pleasant fellow withal.

Bookmakers are fond of doing business with those they call "the swells." Although gentlemen may get into their books, and be due them considerable sums of money, there is always the chance of some day being paid, while they are able in the meantime to turn them and their misfortunes to good account. There are men now on the turf who, it is said, owe thousands of pounds to bookmakers, and even, it is said, to their jockeys.

To those to whom the turf and its surroundings are as a sealed book, such a statement may appear like an outrageous calumny; but it is true, nevertheless, there are dozens of "swells" at the present moment who are under the thumbs of the bookmakers. If the Honourable Tom Twinkleton has a horse good enough to win the Derby, or the Royal Hunt Cup, or some other important race, big Brassy, the bookmaker, has no hesitation in laying freely against the "hon. gent's" colt, because Twinkleton dare not run unless Brassy please; and unless it suits Brassy that it should run and try, Brassy won't please, because the honourable but impecunious gentleman being due the bookmaker a couple of thousands, he cannot do as he pleases in the matter of running his horses under pain of cashing up or being exposed. No wonder, therefore, that Antelope, the Honourable Tom's horse, is so well beaten in its trial the week before the race that it is scratched—much to the consternation of its backers, it being second favourite at 9 to 2. But big Brassy is not ungenerous, he puts the Honourable Tom on the winner, and the honourable gent nominally wins a couple of monkeys (£1,000), one of which is paid to him, the other being placed to his credit. Your shrewd bookmaker likes to play with his fish, an "honourable" must be tenderly handled, because he has many friends; and it is to the interest of a "metallician" to keep sweet with young "swells" even although they are bad payers.

The "mercenaries of the turf," of whom there are many hundreds, owners and bettors, do almost anything to obtain money; they will practise all the tricks which have been described, as well as others of a still more questionable sort, they will submit to any degradation in order to earn a few hundred pounds. In conjunction with a dishonourable trainer they will permit their horses to win or lose false trials, or pull, or poison, or otherwise stupefy their horses, so that in some future race they may get their animals apportioned a weight far below what they ought to carry. To cheat the handicapper is thought to be fair game, to bring off "certainties" is a matter of weight; horses, therefore, are run with the view of getting off weight, and at this branch of their business some owners and trainers exercise great patience, and will wait year after year in order to pull off a good thing.

There are so-called "gentlemen" on the turf who will bribe a telegraph clerk in order to obtain news of a trial that may have been sent over the wires, or suborn a stableman of a popular stable in order to know what is doing in it; they will even connive with a bookmaker's assistant in order to get an inkling of his employer's commissions. Indeed, there are gentlemen now on the turf who do not scruple, when opportunity offers, to take advantage of their friends and daily companions by laying odds against horses which they know will not win, or have no chance to win even if they run; and there are "gentlemen" who lend themselves to bookmakers to do their commissions, who will either back or lay a horse at their bidding. These toadies of the bookmakers, and they are more numerous than is supposed, never question the morality of what they do, but do as they are bid to do, and ask no questions. These mercenaries have no scruples against being "put in" by the bookmakers to lay as much as they can against the chances of a horse which will not be wanted, or to obtain the longest possible odds against a horse which it is known will ultimately "come" in the market, which long, id est, liberal odds, the bookmaker might not obtain if he himself were to ask for them.

Bookmakers are somewhat fond of working their commissions by the aid of persons who are known as "mugs," that is, persons who are presumably greenhorns; but the mugs have to be frequently changed, as they are soon spotted by the shrewd persons they try to "have." No kind of dirty work is too bad for the mercenaries of the turf, some of whom if the reward were sufficiently tempting would think nothing of "nobbling" the finest animal that ever ran. So that he can make money out of his stud, the mercenary owner will either run or pull. No man knows better than he does that "losing a race can be made a certainty," and that in many instances larger sums of money can be made by keeping a horse in the stable than by running it on the racecourse.

The knavery of the turf is so ramified that it is very difficult to tell either where it begins or ends. The telegraphic wires, as all owners of race-horses, bookmakers, and bettors are aware, are now extensively used for the communication of turf information. In towns where there is a great deal of betting, and in consequence several bookmakers, receiving from half-a-dozen to twenty messages every day, denoting changes in the betting or other occurrences during the progress of a race meeting, the telegraph clerks have been known to be so tampered with that information of an important kind meant only for one person has been made public. It is said that in some of our large towns the telegraph clerks have become demoralised, and that many of them bet on the sly, making use of information which has been obtained in their official capacity, and which they ought not to divulge. Ingenious plans have been devised by these persons in order to utilise messages forwarded from one turfite to another, or from a "tout" to his employer.

Say that a message is sent from an agent in London to a bookmaker in Liverpool, that Judas, an acceptor, is being heavily backed for the Cesarewitch, and that from being at 50 to 1 the previous night he is now at 100 to 6; the clerk will delay the message on some pretence or other for ten or twelve minutes, so that a confederate may have time to visit one or two bookmakers and obtain the longer odds, well knowing that the effect of the message will be to make the horse named a prime favourite in the local betting, so that if 50 to 1 can be obtained, a profit may be made by retailing the bet at a third of the odds. That represents one mode of procedure; another plan of petty swindling which has often been tried with success is for the clerks of one town to get from those of another town the result of some important race with great rapidity, and knowing the result, have matters so planned that a confederate will be able to back or lay against, as the case may be, the actual winner or some of the losing horses, with persons who think it too soon for the decision of the race to be known. The plan of working this kind of fraud is for a series of signals to be agreed upon in order to denote the winners and losers in a race. The confederate then proceeds to the Club or bookmakers' chamber, half an hour or twenty minutes before the time set for the race, and talks over the chances of the various horses, asking the state of the odds, etc. By-and-by his "pal" arrives with the news, but he says nothing, he simply sits down, wiping his forehead or blowing his nose as the case may be. This is the signal agreed upon, and the confederate in a most nonchalant manner says: "Very well, then, Bill, I'll just have a couple of sovs. on Busybee for a win, and a couple on Clarion for a show." The bookmaker, knowing his client has never quitted the room, suspects nothing, but takes the money and enters the bet. In ten minutes afterwards the official message comes in: "Busybee, first; Mussulman, second; Clarion, third." Such practices, it is said, are common enough.