Growth of Betting
The most disquieting feature in the consideration of the state of the country with regard to this habit is its spread among the wage-earning classes. By them it was little practised when it first became systematic in connection with horse-racing among people of better means. Groups of the latter class lost money and fortunes long before the fashion took any general hold of very considerable numbers of the aristocratic and wealthy classes. Betting took place principally at the race meetings. There were grand-stands upon some of the race-courses many years before the close of the eighteenth century, probably the largest being the one at Doncaster, erected in 1779 at a cost of £7000. It was not until ten years later that a regular market for credit betting was established by the institution of Tattersall’s Subscription Rooms; and, that the original purpose of the grand-stand was only for viewing the races, is made clear by the contemporary records. At Ascot Heath, a separate wooden shed had to be used by those who wished to bet. Even as late as 1833, although the Epsom stand was the largest in Europe, the betting market was kept away elsewhere, upon the hill. Six years later, complaints having been made of the betting market being held in the grand-stand at Doncaster, to the annoyance of the spectators, especially ladies, arrangements were decided upon for the future to form an enclosure for betting outside the stand. Similar precautions had previously been taken at Goodwood. Betting was transacted at Newmarket at betting posts, where rings were formed on the heath. Betting was also carried on away from the courses at premises belonging to Tattersall’s in London (which, however, in 1839 consisted merely of a small apartment, with only 300 members on the books), and in the vicinity of the course at the Newmarket Subscription Rooms, where there were only 57 members, other than those belonging to the Jockey Club. There were also special rooms hired at Doncaster, York, and Liverpool for members of either of the above clubs to bet in. A chronicle informs us, in the reign of William the Fourth, that although the number of spectators at Newmarket seldom exceeded 500, mostly of the highest classes, the majority on horseback, the turf was becoming more popular in 1836 and the attendances larger.
It will thus be understood that the general public, for a long time entirely excluded from the privileged betting circle, could only take part in the business by the connivance of some of the professional men having the entrée. In 1849, however, the Newmarket authorities, seeing the feasibility of largely adding to their funds, arranged that a small subscription should confer temporary membership of the Newmarket Rooms. This caused many complaints by the old habitués, and it was found necessary, in view of the dubious standing of some of the new-comers, to modify the credit system, and to insist upon daily settlements. The cash gaming of the race-course indulged in by the great bulk of race-goers was not betting, but was carried on by means of roulette-tables, lotteries, sweepstakes, and other adjuncts of the gambling-booth. The Select Committee of the House of Commons (1844), in reporting against the miscellaneous race-course gambling, clearly did not anticipate that the grand-stands and enclosures would take the place of these other methods, and become sources of great profit as places used for gambling by betting, and that the abolition of booths would merely result in the transfer of the gamblers to the enclosures or rings, as may be seen by the following paragraph from their report:—
Your Committee cannot consider the establishment of gambling-booths on race-courses as in any way an essential accompaniment to racing, and they feel that they cannot too strongly express their opinion that all such practices ought to be entirely and universally discontinued. If there is in any place a real demand for races, money enough is sure to be subscribed for plates and stakes to be run for, and if at any place sufficient sums for these purposes cannot be raised without the aid of gambling-booth rents, the races at such places had much better be left off.
Sixty years have gone by, and race-course proprietors acknowledge that the loss of the present gambling-ring rents, or entrance fees, would put a stop to three-fourths of the race meetings in the kingdom.
Legislative enactments followed the Parliamentary Reports, and to a great extent swept away the miscellaneous gambling, which was only to make way, unhappily, for the more subtle form of turf betting. For years before the middle of the nineteenth century, many of the proprietors of public-houses (or persons in collusion with them), and of specially hired offices in the great towns, had been in the habit of using their premises for the purpose of accepting betting money, and, after a time, relations were established between them and some of the credit-betting professionals belonging to the clubs and subscription rooms. This was how betting by those away from the race-course continued, and even increased in volume, notwithstanding the effect of the Betting House Act in 1853, which, immediate as it was with regard to these betting offices, was partially neutralised by the change of location brought about when the new railways were beginning to convey large numbers at a moderate expense to the course, and by the laying on of the telegraph offering the means to others of rapid communication with the betting men at the race meetings, for gambling purposes, by those unable to make the journey.
The time was one of transition, and legislators appear to have overlooked the fact that the miscellaneous booth gambling having been previously suppressed, their enactment putting an end to ready-money betting establishments, then chiefly in towns, would only result in their virtual transfer to every race-course and so-called club. There had been a great deal of irregular and surreptitious cash betting upon the race-course, but it was not a generally recognised system. It was one that had gradually grown. The bookmaker with a satchel taking money in advance and giving tickets, was unknown on our race-courses in the forties. Later on it was particularly recorded that at the Chester Cup race of 1852, one large bookmaker took a great many £5 notes, and the practice was then coming into fashion. It was, however, to laxity in applying the law that the ready-money, or deposit, system owed its subsequent continuation and increase in volume, for there is no doubt whatever that the Act of 1853 was considered at that time to apply to the evil in race-course enclosures as elsewhere. A recognised contemporary authority wrote: “The fatal facility induced by the open deposit system is nipped in the bud”; and another, “Cash betting stopped upon the passing of the Act.” The temptation, however, to race managers to wink at wholesale infraction of the law was very great. Entrance fees to the enclosures promised to become their financial backbone, and to enable them to add enormously to the value of the stakes and cups. And it was found that to permit ready-money betting was to turn a few score of entrance fees to the rings into thousands. That the practice was even many years afterwards considered illegitimate is shown by the Jockey Club notice in the Racing Calendar of July 23, 1874, and the official notice at Goodwood by the Duke of Richmond, “No ready-money betting will be allowed upon any part of the course or park,” in the Calendar of the same date.