(f) Gambling Clubs.—Habitual gambling in the social clubs of wealthy Englishmen has led to a very anomalous state of the law and of its application. It is not worth while to go further back than the case of Downes v. Johnson (Albert Club) to illustrate this. There was no serious dispute as to this not being a betting club, or that the purpose of its existence was not betting. No reasonable person could for a moment doubt that if betting were stopped the club would collapse, and the police authorities in 1895 made an attempt to bring about this result. They had good reason for knowing the evil arising from it. That provisions could be obtained, and were consumed in considerable quantities, was shown; but any serious contention that such a club was a social club would be dispelled by a visit to the premises, in an obscure court turning out of Fleet Street. The judges, however, appeared to be hampered by a desire to shield private betting, and the judgment remains the charter for organised house betting under the protection of the name of club. There are several other such large institutions in London and elsewhere (besides innumerable smaller ones), the chief of those in the metropolis being notorious gambling centres, where settling day is carried on in the same business-like way as on the Stock Exchange. They all owe their continued existence to the reluctance of the Courts and Parliament to deal with the card and Turf gambling which goes on at the well-to-do clubs, and thousands of gambling centres all over the country are shielded by this unhappy partiality.
The above decision may be said to have broken up any efficiency of existing legislation, and so pernicious has its effect been that a very modest attempt to reduce the number of the poorer class institutions was at last introduced as a makeshift in the Licensing Act for the registration of clubs, which came into force on January 1, 1903. It is true that it only applies to clubs selling liquor, but as betting men are almost invariably drinkers it is probably comprehensive in this sense. Its inefficiency was illustrated last May by a decision of Mr. Justice Bucknill, by no means a lover of betting men, who presumably considers himself bound by former decisions. The judge must have known the extreme difficulty of the police getting evidence at all, and that it probably could not be got except by the raid, which he approved, and that a second raid after such a warning would almost inevitably be abortive. Yet, although systematic betting was proved, he ruled that it was not illegal, although it might have been so if it had been shown to go on day after day. The false protection extended to the race-course rings by the Powell-Kempton Park case would be incomplete if it were not to cover the betting clubs, and no branch of the gaming laws is more defective than with regard to these latter.
Last year the Grand Jury at Liverpool made a presentment in which they called attention “to the large sums of money extracted from the public by the so-called social clubs, which have formed the subject of several of the prosecutions which have come before us, and we feel that much harm must be done to working men and clerks belonging to the city by the assistance of these clubs.” Unfortunately, while the Act in question gives facilities for proceedings against such institutions, the police are often bribed. The writer knows of more than one instance of notice of a coming raid having been secretly given by police officers. In one case in London the proprietor openly boasts his defiance of any attempt to set the law in motion against him. Matters are no better in the provinces, and are not likely to be anywhere until the police have been thoroughly overhauled.
(g) Petty Gambling.—A few only of the multifarious forms of petty gambling can be mentioned here, principally with reference to the temptations spread before the rising generation. Amongst them are the automatic machines referred to above, which an ever-vigilant and not too scrupulous commercial instinct has been busy in turning to account for the purpose. Playing-cards figure also under this heading as a very widespread source of demoralisation among the young, especially in poor districts. Enormous quantities are sold in this country, as statistics show, and now that they are made small and cheap they are to be found everywhere. Amongst the young—where there is no bribery or but little—the police are more active and unrestrained. Gaming with cards and in other forms in a public place is prohibited, and prosecutions in connection with them are frequently reported in the newspapers. It is consequently often followed by juveniles in the poorer class refreshment-houses, and the proprietors are liable if in any way conniving at it, as in the case of a man at Hammersmith, where fifteen boys were found playing nap, and it was shown that he charged each boy a penny by the half-hour for the table. This sort of thing is going on all over the kingdom, and between the example set by their elders and the difficulty of passing more drastic laws while leaving gambling almost unfettered for rich people, the coming race in Great Britain promises to be worse rather than better, notwithstanding all the efforts of reformers. Sir W. H. Stephenson said at Newcastle some time ago, in sentencing a group of lads for gambling, that he did not know what would become of the rising generation. Very numerous instances could be quoted of remarks showing the astonishment and despondency felt by magistrates generally. At many of the Courts hardly a week passes but what a batch of these young offenders has to be dealt with. Organised Sunday gambling is very common in numbers of districts, regular scouts and a system of signalling being maintained to outwit the police.
N. Gambling in the Stock, Produce, and other Markets
It may be said that there is positively no effective legislation in existence, if an exception be made of the Bank Act 1867, 30 Vict. c. 29, which provides for contracts identifying the shares of banks bought and sold. However thoroughly we may be convinced that much of the business in the above marts is to a great extent a matter of gaming, it is impossible to ignore the fact that there is a large amount of legitimate business transacted in them, and that the commercial world could hardly exist without them. There is, moreover, the great difficulty of drawing a line between the commerce and the gambling. Of course the havoc and ruin arising are known to all. The Stock Exchange is probably responsible for as much loss and misery as even the Turf, and the suffering caused in Lancashire by the recent cotton gambling is but one instance, and that as it were a by-product, of the extravagant transactions of the produce exchanges. Pages might be filled with instances, such as the sale on a single occasion of two millions of a well-known railway’s stock, only £500 of it being a genuine investment. Where a commercial element is inherent, and of shifting and unascertainable proportions, difficulty has hitherto been found in framing laws against gambling which would not hamper legitimate enterprise; and consequently, in our country, by leaving things alone, the gambler has been actually encouraged by allowing him to go scot free of the moderate pro rata dues exacted from the investor. In this particular the present laws are most unhappily defective, and when we come to deal with remedies on a later page suggestions will be made upon the subject.
Betting
In the forefront of existing legislation with regard to betting is the great statute known as the Betting Act 1853, 16 & 17 Vict. c. 119. “This most salutary Act,” as Lord Chief Justice Russell called it, was passed when betting by the deposit of ready money was carried on to an enormous extent in houses and offices in towns, and only to a very limited extent in race-course enclosures; and the Attorney-General of the day, in telling the House of Commons that the Bill was not intended to interfere with Tattersall’s, was either unaware how rapidly the ready-money system at the races was growing, or designedly suppressed allusion to it, as an awkward question not absolutely necessary to be faced at the time. The Act crushed the town houses, and the business was transferred to the rings, and the question of the application of the Act to these open-air betting-shops was not decided by the (Criminal) High Court until 1897, in Hawke v. Dunn (1897, 1 Q.B.), when Mr. Justice Hawkins, whose knowledge of the Turf was well known, delivered an unanimous judgment on behalf of the five judges of the Queen’s Bench Division who heard the case, holding the rings to be nothing but betting-houses or places. This meant police raids upon the rings, and the writer was assured at Scotland Yard that the police force would do its duty. But the stoppage of half the race meetings in the country was involved, and the Jockey Club and the bookmakers immediately trumped up a collusive civil case—Powell v. Kempton Park Co., Ltd. (1897, 2 Q.B.)—which could be carried above the (Criminal) High Court. The supposed plaintiff was a clerk in the office of the business men of the Jockey Club. It could not be found that he was either a householder or a ratepayer at the suburban address endorsed on the writ. His only status was obtained by getting a single share in the Kempton Park Co. from one of its directors, a bookmaker, and within a month of the above decision a writ was issued by him under the pretext that he wished to prevent the company permitting the illegalities condemned in Hawke v. Dunn, but for the real purpose of re-trying the question in a form which might give a chance of overthrowing that decision in the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. In each case the Courts were divided, but the majority of both went against the unanimous judgment of the Criminal Judges, although the collusion and misstatements were of so scandalous a nature that they were denounced by more than one member of the latter tribunal. These cases were long, but for the general public the question of whether the existing legislation of the Act of 1853 ought or ought not to have been held to apply to the rings can be put in a nutshell. All the Courts agreed that the rings must be treated as if they were capable of being “places.” How then could they be ruled out of the Act? Everything turned upon the construction of the language of sections 1 and 3; here it is, abbreviated but not altered: “Any person who, being the owner or occupier of any place, or a person using the same, shall open, keep, or use the same for the purpose of any money being received, etc.; and any person who, being the owner or occupier, shall knowingly and wilfully permit the same to be opened, kept, or used by any other person for the purpose of any money being received, etc.” Everything turns upon the italicised words. Lord Chancellor Halsbury and the majority of the judges took the only view under which it was possible to protect the rings, by holding those italicised words to mean a person having authority over the whole ring, a person analogous to and of the same genus as the owner or occupier, and therefore as not applying to any one of the various bookmakers carrying on business on his own account within it. Three questions which were not asked should have disposed of this view entirely:—
(1) If the any other person is a person analogous to and of the same genus as the owner or occupier, why is he in this second part of section 3 clearly considered to be in the subordinate position of a user by permission? And if this second part of the section does not hit such a person as the bookmaker, what possible person can it be aimed at, not already struck by the first part of the section (other than those having the care or management separately named later on)?
(2) Why did the Act immediately stop the business of the town houses? For, under the construction now given to it, the proprietor had merely to alter his arrangements, announcing that he himself would take no part in the betting, but would get his profit by an entrance fee charged to all comers alike, as the proprietors of the rings do.