In thanking our Derby subscribers for their past support, we respectfully solicit a continuance of their favours on the above terms.

The Private Telegraphic Key Book will be issued to Season Subscribers only in the course of a few days. Those that intend renewing their subscriptions should do so at once.

It must not be imagined that this advertisement was intended to obtain one large haul before the business was abandoned. With little alteration it ran for a very considerable time in many papers, and the expenses of advertising alone must have been enormous. For it is not to be expected that any blind credulity exhibited itself in the various publishing offices, and hard cash, and plenty of it, had to be expended before a line of Balliee & Walter’s was allowed to appear. It will be seen by what we have quoted that winnings and accounts of investments are promised on Monday, and in true business-like style every depositor received his envelope. With what feverish anxiety many must have torn open the enclosure! So many men, so many minds, says the proverb, and the ways of expressing wrath must have been various indeed. We are, however, not in a position to furnish any particulars as to how the news was received, it is enough to know what the information was. And, as may be guessed, it was not satisfactory. The circulars were always neatly constructed, and set forth with a regret that owing to a combination of untoward circumstances the hopes of the chief investor, “the man at the post,” had been dashed, and for that week—always the first week of such an occurrence—matters had resulted disastrously. Then would follow a statement of account, in which it was shown that investments had been fortunate at the outset, that then they had changed, and that by placing too much money on an apparent certainty, so as to recover the losings, the whole bulk of the bank had departed, never to return. The sums received by Messrs Balliee & Walter were of course various, and according to the amount, so was the table arranged; but there was a great family likeness about them all, the principle being to show that the horses, when they did not win, were very close up, and so seconds, with now and again a third, were nearly always chosen! Thus one £10 stake for the Derby week of 1871—the week in which the advertisement given appears—was accounted for thus:—

Epsom, Tuesday, May 23.Won.Lost.
Trial Stakes, Manille,—£0100
Horton Stakes, Trident,—100
Maiden Plate, Queen Bee,—200
Rous Stakes, Banderolle,—0100
Woodcote Stakes, Cremorne (11 to 8 on),£0146—
Wednesday.
Bentinck Plate, Lady Atholstone,—0100
Derby, King of the Forest,—100
Stanley Stakes, Hamilton,—200
Match, Lizzie Cowl (5 to 4 on),080—
Manor Stakes, Holdenby,—0100
Town Plate, Banderolle,—100
Thursday.
Glasgow Plate, Countryman (2 to 1 on),050—
High Level Handicap, Free Trade,—0100
Two-year-old Stakes, Clotilde filly,—100
Tadworth Stakes, Manna,—200
£176£12100

With five per cent. commission charged on the winnings, this left a balance £1, 3s. 91⁄2d. due to Messrs Balliee & Walter, which it was hoped would be at once remitted. This was cruel, but crueller still was the statement, that had the stake been larger, affairs would have arranged themselves satisfactorily, as a great change took place at the close of Thursday and on Friday, and those whose banks lasted over the first run of ill-luck left off winners of large sums. With the demand for payment of balance came a request which, from its very coolness, must have staggered those who, being once victimised, could see through the swindle, though in very many instances—as if in corroboration of Mr Carlyle’s theory—it was complied with. This was a desire for a fresh trial, and positive security from loss was guaranteed. It is noticeable in the table given that by a judicious selection of races and horses the winnings were bound to be always low, as animals with odds on are selected, and that when stakes are lowest. When on the doubling principle the stake on the chosen winner would be inconveniently large a race was omitted. The returns made were necessarily various, but that given is an accurate representative of the system.

Balliee & Walter continued to flourish for a long time; but whether it was that they became individually greedy, whether newspaper proprietors became exorbitant in their demands on the spoil, or whether rivalry affected them, we know not, all we do know is that they committed a most openly outrageous act on a race-course, and the bubble at once burst. It may seem strange that anything discretionary-investment agents, who had been gradually becoming a byword and a reproach, could do would affect their position; but our duty is to record the fact, and not to allow it to be disputed on any theoretic grounds. If they had calmly continued to merely swindle, they might have advertised till now; but they outraged the sanctity of the British race-course, and were damned for all time, if not to all eternity. They had become possessed by some means or other of a hurdle-racer called Goodfellow, and two or three weeks before one of the suburban gate-money meetings they made a match for him to run a race at it against a very moderate mare. Immediately this was done they circularised all customers, telling them to be sure and back Goodfellow, as he could not possibly lose, and stating that on account of very heavy investments already made, they could afford, as a favour to their clients, to return them double the odds which would be laid against Goodfellow on the day. In the Kingsclere Racing Circular, a weekly pamphlet issued by these honourable gentlemen, we find under date March 10, 1871, the following ingenious application. This, it has been since proved, brought heavy sums to the Ravenscourt Park exchequer, whence it was not allowed to depart, Messrs Balliee & Walter, like true and legitimate bookmakers, preferring to lay the 6 to 4’s against their own horse themselves, rather than that their patrons should be inconvenienced by having to take shorter prices from others:—

CROYDON SPECIAL INVESTMENT.

The match—Goodfellow v. Harriett—will come off at Croydon on Tuesday next. It is simply a matter of putting the coin down and picking it up again. It is any odds on our horse, and as we wish our Subscribers to participate in this certainty, we will undertake to obtain for them 6 to 4 for all cash sent, which must reach Mr Walter, Ravenscourt Park, if possible by Monday evening, and not later than Tuesday’s first post. Gibson is sure to back Harriett for a 1000, and probably bring her favourite. The sole reason of us wishing Subscribers to allow us to invest for them, is to prevent them rushing on and spoiling the market, which will be to their interest as well as our own. We have engaged one of the cleverest cross country riders of the day to ride Goodfellow, and our horse never was so fit and well as at the present time. Daniels will have the mount of Harriett. Such a chance may not occur again throughout the season. Investors should speculate a £50 or £100 Bank. We cannot undertake to invest more than £300 for any one of our patrons.

By this means Balliee & Walter obtained from their purblind dupes a large amount of money with which to back Goodfellow, and of this they of course placed as much as they could upon Harriett, the opposing candidate. In the race, if race so iniquitous a transaction can be called, the discretionary-investment horse was, as might have been expected, “pulled,” so that Balliee & Walter had all the money they received to the good, besides what they won from the unsuspecting by backing the animal they had pretended to oppose. This led to their gradually disappearing from the front pages of the newspapers, though they continued their business under an alias very successfully. Walter was eventually fined a hundred pounds at one of the metropolitan courts, under the Betting-House Act, 1853, for having carried on a part of his business at Hammersmith. It seems rather ludicrous that a man should have been fined for what he in reality never did. But lawyers and magistrates could not distinguish the difference between betting and only pretending to bet, so they fined Mr Walter just as they would have done if he had been a really honourable man, and had therefore deserved punishment.

From the discretionary-investment class of turf-swindler we will now pass on to another, quite as ingenious and very often as dangerous. A few years back, when opportunity served—that is, when the honest layer of odds was harassed by the police and driven from London, and when good men and bad were almost irremediably mixed up—a sharp rogue hit upon an idea for making the tipstering and private-advice business a means to quite a new phase of imposition. This was known among those who profited by it as “forcing the voucher,” and a very pretty little game it was while it lasted, though the profits of pioneers were of course considerably diminished as soon as ever the secret got wind, by the imitative faculty to which reference has been already made. Commencing, as usual, with small advertisements and large profits, forcers in time found themselves, by stress of competition, obliged to spend a good share of their hard earnings in specially-tempting invitations to those who would go any but the right way towards being wealthy; or else to seek other courses. So in 1872 we find three or four firms occupying a large share of the papers, and giving forth promises without stint. Whether the original forcer was in any of these partnerships it is impossible to tell, as the names were, as a rule, fictitious, and often changed; but whether or not, it is certain that those who advertised heaviest drove all small thieves from the field, and so, two years back, the business, as far as we are concerned, was carried on chiefly by Adkins & Wood, Robert Danby & Co., Marshall & Grant, and James Rawlings & Co., who advertised quite separately, but whose notifications might very easily have been the work of one pen. We will therefore take Rawlings & Co. to represent the fraternity, and in their advertisement which appeared at the end of April 1872 will be found the peculiarities of all the others. This is it:—