Betting & Gambling: A National Evil

by Unknown

“Engaged by the Executive to ensure order and comfort to the public attending the meeting: 14 detectives (racing), 15 detectives (Scotland Yard), 7 police inspectors, 9 police sergeants, 76 police, and a supernumerary contingent of specially selected men from the Army Reserve and Corps of Commissionaires. The above force will be employed solely for the purpose of maintaining order and excluding bad characters, etc. They will have the assistance also of a strong force of the Surrey Constabulary.”

I remember once when I let fall a remark on the subject of horse-racing among friends chatting together, I was voted “morose.” Is it really morose to object to public gatherings which their own promoters declare to be dangerous for all decent folk? Every one knows that horse-racing is carried on mainly for the delight and profit of fools, ruffians, and thieves. That intelligent men allow themselves to take part in the affair, and defend their conduct by declaring that their presence “maintains the character of a sport essentially noble,” merely shows that intelligence can easily enough divest itself of sense and decency.

For a good insight from a bookmaker’s point of view of the “sport of kings” the reader is referred to Sixty Years on the Turf, by George Hodgman.

Bad as all this is, the continued permission of existence to these scores of peripatetic gambling hells would be an isolated evil were it not inextricably mixed up indirectly with the daily life of the masses of the population, who very seldom or never visit the courses. But these baneful institutions and the gambling clubs are fed by the life-blood of the people, whose hard-earned money flows by the thousand retail conduits of street and factory bookmakers to these gambling marts and clearing houses. It is not only where working men and women gather in numbers, but in the home, amongst domestic servants of both sexes, in the shop, the office, on the journey, in educational establishments, even in the Sunday school and the juvenile social club and class, that betting is discovered. A lady who devotes her life to the young, and lives among them in a poor part of London, says that she has very little difficulty about drink amongst the youths, but hardly dare attack the betting systematically for fear of losing her protégés. She found one lad actually receiving telegrams from France during the Continental racing season.

An alarming development, for those who travel by rail (and who does not?), is disclosed in several cases of signalmen having been found gambling and carrying on bookmakers’ businesses. Any one who, like the writer, has been in a railway collision, will vividly appreciate this. The crunch of the carriages, the awful succeeding moment between life and death, are among the ills that mortality is heir to in modern times, and are borne with more or less philosophy, to some extent perhaps depending upon the preventibility of the cause. But it will be well for railway directors, many of whom provide special facilities for the race-course gamesters all through the summer, to the inconvenience of the ordinary traffic, and wink at the gambling which goes on in their carriages however illegal, to draw the line at signal-boxes being made places under the Act and their signalmen being bookmakers. The conviction recently of a signalman for bookmaking at Knaresborough is by no means a solitary instance. In reporting to the Board of Trade on the North British Railway collision at Lochmill siding, Major Pringle states that just before it occurred there were five persons in the signal-box playing games. There are reasons to fear that there are bookmakers’ agents in many of the large railway stations, carrying on their regular nefarious business with the staffs, and affecting the comfort and safety of the public. As to the race-course ruffians, whose patronage is so carefully nursed, they have been known to descend from race trains and relieve refreshment rooms of the provisions without payment, so that it is now the practice in some places to clear them of their contents before the advent of these traffic-cherished caravans.

There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that such cases as that of the clerk through whom the bookmakers robbed the Liverpool Bank of £170,000 (1901), or of the man who began life as a ready-money bookmaker, married into a titled family, was presented at Court, made a member of fashionable clubs, owned the best race-horse of the year, and ended his society career in his cross-examination in the High Court (1904), are exceptional beyond the fact of their striking notoriety. All sections of society are more or less corrupted by the gambling habits prevalent, and particularly by the professional betting system. It would be interesting to trace how many of the unhappy people figuring in the Divorce Court have been connected with the Turf.

In the Civil Service the evil has spread most seriously in the Post Office and Police departments, but is not confined to them. Information having been sent to the writer of this paper that a clerk in a Government office was using the public stationery and other conveniences to issue betting lists from that office, personal application was made to the principal of the establishment, who investigated the matter, found the allegation to be correct, and promptly put a stop to the proceeding. Upon another occasion it was discovered that two clerks were hired to spend their two-day holiday from Civil Service work by the betting men financially interested in a race meeting, who employed them in taking the entrance money to the rings. Having lost a good deal by dishonest janitors, these shrewd speculators had secured the services of individuals who dared run no risk.

The published opinions of such men as Field-Marshal Sir George White, General Wavell, Lord Charles Beresford, Admiral Rawson, and others bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the militant Services are suffering from the immunity obtained by professional gamesters, owing to the lax application of our existing laws and the need for others. The soldiers returning from South Africa were systematically induced by gamblers to part with their savings; and is it not probable that some of the regrettable incidents during the South African campaign, which the nation had to deplore, arose in part from the time of our officers in peace, if not in war, having been occupied more with betting and gambling than in the study of their profession? Many items of information, both of a private and public nature, are alarmingly suggestive of such considerations. A single instance of the latter may be found space for. One of the witnesses before the Select Committee of the House of Lords was an officer commanding a battalion of the Scots Guards, and he gave evidence of the fact that he was a sort of chairman of a betting committee, the go-between of the Jockey Club and Tattersall’s, upon which he spent a considerable portion of his time, the principal duty apparently being to settle betting squabbles between members of the betting clubs and the professional betting men. If this is not considered infra dig. for the colonel of a crack regiment, what is to be expected of the rank and file? His colleagues upon this important tribunal included, he said, a representative of the Ring and two well-known commission agents, the trade alias for bookmakers. We have no hesitation in saying that the Navy is as badly tainted, not only upon the evidence of officers whom we have mentioned and others, but on information from different sources. It was the painful duty of one in authority some time ago to court-martial a young comrade who had got into the hands of bookmakers, and took £200 to pay his debts from funds which, as orderly officer of the mess, he was able to lay hands upon. He was dismissed the Service and suffered a year’s imprisonment. In 1904 Rear-Admiral Henderson, Superintendent of Devonport Dockyard, discovered that betting was being systematically carried on, and published an order notifying the discharge of a skilled labourer of nineteen years’ service.

Professional betting is not confined to horse-racing. Lists are habitually issued in connection with other sports, particularly football. It is gambling which causes the rush for the football editions of the halfpenny journals, and, notwithstanding the efforts made by some of its principal patrons, leading officials of the football world have been found taking part in the disreputable gambling arrangements of sporting newspapers. There are numerous instances in athletics, such as foot-racing, of the proceedings being reduced to a farce by the bookmakers, who controlled the runners; and more than one serious accident on the cycle track has been caused by the efforts of one or more competitors to obey the roping orders from their masters in the ring without arousing the suspicions of the public spectators.