No one can accord sympathy to the professional welsher; but bad as he is, he must be protected from lynch law. There ought to be some properly constituted tribunal to which he should be held responsible—his offence is the obtaining of money by false pretences, and it is incumbent on the Jockey Club to devise machinery for the trial and punishment of these pests of the turf. And care must be taken that the racecourse roughs are not allowed to devise plots with the object of having respectable persons attacked and robbed under the false plea of their being welshers. These are matters of police, on which the Jockey Club may, in all fairness, be asked to legislate. It has already done a little something in that way, but it ought to organise a band of special constables to assist in the regulation of the ring. Habit and repute welshers are as well known and as easily identified as the popular jockeys. They should be prevented from entering any of the rings where betting is carried on, and if found betting "outside" should be promptly handed over to the police to be punished as rogues and vagabonds. A few sentences of sixty days with hard labour would very speedily diminish the regiment of welshers; as for the unmitigated rough, his fate should be that of the garroters—twenty lashes! It is somewhat remarkable that in some districts welshers are promptly dealt with by the authorities, while at other seats of sport they escape all consequences!
In the interests of law and order on the turf, the honest bookmaker should be licensed by the Jockey Club, and by the exhibition of a blue ribbon in his buttonhole, or some other mark of identification, be able to present himself to those desirous of betting as a person who would at once pay whatever amount he bargained to lose. These modes of dealing with the honest and dishonest betting men are obviously logical; at any rate, the hints given afford a foundation for action of the kind indicated, that it is surprising they have not already been acted upon.
The Jockey Club at the present time takes no official cognisance of disputed bets, that part of the business of racing being left to a committee of Tattersall's; but this inaction on the part of the Club is a blunder. It will be well for them to form a tribunal to deal with all disputes about bets—a tribunal which would give a prompt and, above all things, a logical decision, and so carry on from precedent to precedent. The present laws of betting are much in need of overhauling; indeed, to use an old phrase, they require "a new stock, lock, and barrel."
ASSUMED NAMES; JOCKEYS AND THEIR COMMISSIONERS; AND OTHER MATTERS.
Whether or not assumed names should be permitted in racing has been more than once submitted to the consideration of the Jockey Club. Persons, it is said, who are ashamed to run horses in their own name ought not to be "on the turf." The admission of assumed names is, however, a feature of turf economy which carries its own condemnation, and need not be wrangled over. In reality the bearers of such names are known to their turf contemporaries, and as assumed names do not save them from being liable to the pains and penalties of wrongdoing, should they do wrong, why they should wear a mask is difficult to understand.
Some little inquiry into this matter was at one time made by the writer.
"Why is it," he asked a famous racing critic, "that Brown does not race under his own name?"
"Oh, don't you know? His father is old Vellum, the dissenting bookseller of Ave Marie Street, and it would never do to let it be known that his son is on the turf."