By way of contrast to this prudent Yorkshireman, take the case of a young fellow who a good many years ago flashed upon the turf like a meteor. Winning £300 when Caractacus won the Derby, he followed up his success at Epsom by bagging a large amount at Ascot, and the like good fortune attending his efforts at Goodwood, at the end of the year he left off with an addition to his bank account of £2,700. Extraordinary to relate, he was equally successful in the following year, but a change of fortune overtook him at last, and from being a swell of the first water, constantly in luck, always feasting on fat things, he gradually fell and fell till, in a few years, he was glad to earn a shilling or two at race meetings by acting as a peripatetic tipster. Many stories of a like kind are doubtless known to persons who are acquainted with the ever-changing incidents of our race meetings.
Apropos to betting for cash, one of the most singular utterances that has ever appeared against the "principle" of betting for ready money is that of Mr. William Day, published in one of the monthly miscellanies, and in which he describes that mode of betting as a "pernicious system," as "the greatest pest of society, the current evil of the day." Further, Mr. Day says the practice of ready money betting is "a blot on the nationality of every Englishman!" Unfortunately for himself, Mr. Day stultifies his own arguments against ready money betting by his advocacy of the Pari-mutuel plan of backing horses, which is a ready money system of betting par excellence, the adoption of which Mr. Day thinks would put a stop to reckless speculation, as, indeed, would ready money betting conducted through the medium of the bookmakers (who ought to be licensed).
The writer of these pages, as is obvious enough, is quite of the same opinion as Mr. Day, that "so long as a man can go into the ring and bet his untold thousands upon race after race, not having as many hundreds to pay his losses with, so long as he can find usurers to supply him with the needful to be paid on the Monday after, then so long, too, will he continue to bet, little caring what he pays for the convenience; as things are he is compelled to raise funds to save his credit and his respect among his aristocratic associates, but in the other case (of Pari-mutuel betting) there would not be such pressing necessity for him to have the money."
A very excellent reason was recently given for the adoption of a ready money system of betting by one of the "big bookmakers" of the day; it was pithily expressed to a gentleman who was complaining of the small odds now laid to bettors. "Look you," said the layer of the odds, "I have thirty-three per cent. of bad debts to contend with every season, and so have some of my friends. When we have ready money betting there will be no bad debts, and the odds will then extend by twenty or thirty per cent." An extension of the odds, say all backers of horses, is certainly much needed; of late years prices have been growing small by degrees and beautifully less.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] "Public Form," I regret to learn, died in the autumn of 1891, at his residence near Glasgow.
[5] This note and the preceding are abridged from a magazine sketch about "Public Form."