Another phase of the chicanery of the turf may be now alluded to,
arising from the mercenary spirit of certain greedy owners--it is the
practice of an owner to take a big bet about one of his horses, and
leave his "lot" in the hands of a bookmaker to "work" in the market
as he pleases. The right of a man to wallop his own nigger has been
asserted; in the same spirit there are men who, having accepted in
a handicap or other race with four or five horses, claim to do with
them as they please, and what this style of doing business leads to
can be gathered from the preceding pages. The mode alluded to is a
contemptible phase of turf action. In plain language, the owner so
acting simply lends himself to a fraud, because the bookmaker, knowing
that only the horse which he has laid against is intended to win, takes
his measures accordingly, and manages so to bring the others before
the public that they will all in turn be well backed by unthinking
backers--the horse which is intended to win the race being kept, when
possible, carefully in the background, stories about its condition
being published which prevent its being noticed. The intended horse may
of course be beaten, but the cunning of the transaction is in no way
lessened by that fact. It remains that the owner, in conjunction with
the bookmaker, tried to do "a bit of thieving," for which, in other
circles, he would be written down a blackguard. On the turf, however,
morals are not quite so severely measured.
Not a few men are unfortunately compelled to the exercise of such
chicanery by the "force of circumstances." There are men now on the
turf who, while they are nominally the owners of a stud of race-horses,
are in reality slaves of bookmakers. They have at some meeting extended
their arm too far, and have been unable in consequence to respond to
the call of time. In other words, in expectation of some of the horses
they had backed winning, they betted to a greater amount than they
found themselves able to pay. In such an ignominious position they
frequently become tools of the bookmakers, and run or do not run their
horses as they are told by their master, who, although imperative
enough in his demands, may be a pleasant fellow withal.
Bookmakers are fond of doing business with those they call "the
swells." Although gentlemen may get into their books, and be due them
considerable sums of money, there is always the chance of some day
being paid, while they are able in the meantime to turn them and their
misfortunes to good account. There are men now on the turf who, it is
said, owe thousands of pounds to bookmakers, and even, it is said, to
their jockeys.
To those to whom the turf and its surroundings are as a sealed book,
such a statement may appear like an outrageous calumny; but it is
true, nevertheless, there are dozens of "swells" at the present moment
who are under the thumbs of the bookmakers. If the Honourable Tom
Twinkleton has a horse good enough to win the Derby, or the Royal Hunt
Cup, or some other important race, big Brassy, the bookmaker, has no
hesitation in laying freely against the "hon. gent's" colt, because
Twinkleton dare not run unless Brassy please; and unless it _suits_
Brassy that it should run and try, Brassy won't please, because the
honourable but impecunious gentleman being due the bookmaker a couple
of thousands, he cannot do as he pleases in the matter of running his
horses under pain of cashing up or being exposed. No wonder, therefore,
that Antelope, the Honourable Tom's horse, is so well beaten in its
trial the week before the race that it is scratched--much to the
consternation of its backers, it being second favourite at 9 to 2. But
big Brassy is not ungenerous, he puts the Honourable Tom on the winner,
and the honourable gent nominally wins a couple of monkeys (£1,000),
one of which is paid to him, the other being placed to his credit.
Your shrewd bookmaker likes to play with his fish, an "honourable"
must be tenderly handled, because he has many friends; and it is to
the interest of a "metallician" to keep sweet with young "swells" even
although they are bad payers.
The "mercenaries of the turf," of whom there are many hundreds, owners
and bettors, do almost anything to obtain money; they will practise
all the tricks which have been described, as well as others of a still
more questionable sort, they will submit to any degradation in order to
earn a few hundred pounds. In conjunction with a dishonourable trainer
they will permit their horses to win or lose false trials, or pull, or
poison, or otherwise stupefy their horses, so that in some future race
they may get their animals apportioned a weight far below what they
ought to carry. To cheat the handicapper is thought to be fair game, to
bring off "certainties" is a matter of weight; horses, therefore, are
run with the view of getting off weight, and at this branch of their
business some owners and trainers exercise great patience, and will
wait year after year in order to pull off a good thing.
There are so-called "gentlemen" on the turf who will bribe a telegraph
clerk in order to obtain news of a trial that may have been sent over
the wires, or suborn a stableman of a popular stable in order to
know what is doing in it; they will even connive with a bookmaker's
assistant in order to get an inkling of his employer's commissions.
Indeed, there are gentlemen now on the turf who do not scruple, when
opportunity offers, to take advantage of their friends and daily
companions by laying odds against horses which they know will not win,
or have no chance to win even if they run; and there are "gentlemen"
who lend themselves to bookmakers to do their commissions, who will
either back or lay a horse at their bidding. These toadies of the
bookmakers, and they are more numerous than is supposed, never question
the morality of what they do, but do as they are bid to do, and ask no
questions. These mercenaries have no scruples against being "put in"
by the bookmakers to lay as much as they can against the chances of
a horse which will not be wanted, or to obtain the longest possible
odds against a horse which it is known will ultimately "come" in the
market, which long, _id est_, liberal odds, the bookmaker might not
obtain if he himself were to ask for them.
Bookmakers are somewhat fond of working their commissions by the aid of
persons who are known as "mugs," that is, persons who are presumably
greenhorns; but the mugs have to be frequently changed, as they are
soon spotted by the shrewd persons they try to "have." No kind of dirty
work is too bad for the mercenaries of the turf, some of whom if the
reward were sufficiently tempting would think nothing of "nobbling" the
finest animal that ever ran. So that he can make money out of his stud,
the mercenary owner will either run or pull. No man knows better than
he does that "losing a race can be made a certainty," and that in many
instances larger sums of money can be made by keeping a horse in the
stable than by running it on the racecourse.
The knavery of the turf is so ramified that it is very difficult to
tell either where it begins or ends. The telegraphic wires, as all
owners of race-horses, bookmakers, and bettors are aware, are now
extensively used for the communication of turf information. In towns
where there is a great deal of betting, and in consequence several
bookmakers, receiving from half-a-dozen to twenty messages every
day, denoting changes in the betting or other occurrences during the
progress of a race meeting, the telegraph clerks have been known to be
so tampered with that information of an important kind meant only for
one person has been made public. It is said that in some of our large
towns the telegraph clerks have become demoralised, and that many of
them bet on the sly, making use of information which has been obtained
in their official capacity, and which they ought not to divulge.
Ingenious plans have been devised by these persons in order to utilise
messages forwarded from one turfite to another, or from a "tout" to his
employer.
Say that a message is sent from an agent in London to a bookmaker in
Liverpool, that Judas, an acceptor, is being heavily backed for the
Cesarewitch, and that from being at 50 to 1 the previous night he is
now at 100 to 6; the clerk will delay the message on some pretence or
other for ten or twelve minutes, so that a confederate may have time to
visit one or two bookmakers and obtain the longer odds, well knowing
that the effect of the message will be to make the horse named a prime
favourite in the local betting, so that if 50 to 1 can be obtained, a
profit may be made by retailing the bet at a third of the odds. That
represents one mode of procedure; another plan of petty swindling
which has often been tried with success is for the clerks of one town
to get from those of another town the result of some important race
with great rapidity, and _knowing_ the result, have matters so planned
that a confederate will be able to back or lay against, as the case
may be, the actual winner or some of the losing horses, with persons
who think it too soon for the decision of the race to be known. The
plan of working this kind of fraud is for a series of signals to be
agreed upon in order to denote the winners and losers in a race. The
confederate then proceeds to the Club or bookmakers' chamber, half an
hour or twenty minutes before the time set for the race, and talks
over the chances of the various horses, asking the state of the odds,
etc. By-and-by his "pal" arrives with the news, but he says nothing, he
simply sits down, wiping his forehead or blowing his nose as the case
may be. This is the signal agreed upon, and the confederate in a most
nonchalant manner says: "Very well, then, Bill, I'll just have a couple
of sovs. on Busybee for a win, and a couple on Clarion for a show."
The bookmaker, knowing his client has never quitted the room, suspects
nothing, but takes the money and enters the bet. In ten minutes
afterwards the official message comes in: "Busybee, first; Mussulman,
second; Clarion, third." Such practices, it is said, are common enough.