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

WITH THE PROPHETS.

"The ingenuity and industry expended on what is called 'tipping' in connection with horse-racing ought to bring good fortune in no halting measure to the professors of the art, who appear to spend their lives in trying to enrich everybody but themselves."

So wrote, some four or five years ago, an essayist in the pages of one of the "superior" magazines.

That the business of tipping goes on as briskly as ever, the experts in that line of turf illusion being still busily occupied in benevolent endeavours to confer benefit on their fellow-men, can be ascertained by all who will take the trouble to glance over the advertising columns of the numerous sporting journals of the time.

A point worthy of notice in connection with these announcements is the style now adopted in fashioning them. New and improved methods of communicating with the public are constantly being devised. Tipping nowadays is a "business" of importance requiring large dealings with the telegraph; but long ago—say about the close of the "thirties," and in the "forties" of the present century, when the writer became interested in horse-racing, consequent on having won a few sovereigns by the victory of Merry Monarch in the Derby—tipping was much less obtrusive than it is to-day, and was carried on chiefly by means of what may be called "disguises." Such announcements as were made public usually bore that the advertiser was in exclusive possession of information about a horse which was certain to win the Derby or some other important race; but, as a rule, the great event decided at Epsom was, in the beginning of tipping, the race most favoured, and the person advertising not seldom posed as "a gentleman's valet out of a place," or as "a stableman dying of consumption," or "an old military man," or as some person very remote from the being he really was.

"Who, then," it will be asked, "were those persons?" Well, as there were not so many of them as there are to-day, when "tipping," as was said a few months ago to a magistrate, is a "profession," it will not prove a difficult task to give information about their ways of working, as I happen to be able to speak with some degree of knowledge of two or three of the number who were among the first to advertise in days when the mediums for such announcements were anything but numerous, and advertising was somewhat costly, there being then an advertisement duty of one shilling and sixpence exigible on each announcement, whilst postage was also expensive.

In the beginning of race tipping the Queen's head had not been invented. The outside prophets had at first only a local audience, but even during the "thirties" London was occupied by a vast population, and there was always a sufficient percentage of its inhabitants so interested in racing as to find employment for half-a-dozen tipsters, in addition to those engaged on such newspapers of the time as kept prophets, some of whom were "verse-jinglers" of no mean capacity, as a selection from their poetic prognostications would prove, were a collection of the best of them to be made and published with the necessary notes of explanation.

The first of the prophets to whom I will refer were a man and a woman, both persons of ability, able to assume a variety of characters, and by doing so carry on their little game industriously from season to season. There was no collusion between them, however; they were in no way connected.

The man, before he began work as a tipster, had been for several years under butler in one of the big Pall Mall clubs, and having drawn the winner of the Chester Cup in a plethoric "sweep"—many of which used to be, and I believe still are, organised in London in connection with the more important races—he found himself in possession of sufficient funds, including the money he had saved in service, to become lessee of a public-house in a little street off Fetter Lane, in which for a time he did well, so well that he took courage and married, his wife being able to assist him in his business.

It is almost needless to say, with a landlord possessed of a taste for the turf, his house came in time to be much frequented by the smaller fry of sporting men having tastes in common and being fond of betting, although the sums risked seldom exceeded half-a-crown, or at most double that amount.