information quite as striking as the above could be given, but they are
unnecessary in view of the statements of officials and others made before
the Select Committee of the House of Lords (1901-2). Briefly summarised,
the evidence showed that the practice of betting had grown to such an
extent amongst the working classes that it was quite commonly carried
on in factories and workshops by agents of the bookmakers, and outside
of them by the street betting men. In speaking of the former method,
one of many testimonies was given by the Lord Provost of Glasgow, who
said that betting was carried on to an enormous extent in the great
workshops there; while an idea of the latter can be obtained from Police
Superintendent Shannon’s statement that in Lambeth alone 441 persons
had been proceeded against in the previous year, the fines amounting to
£2000. The evidence proved also that it was not confined to men, but
had spread to women and children; that it caused the neglect of wives
and children, disregard for parents, and carelessness and indifference
in their occupations, frequently resulting in embezzlement from their
employers; that this professional betting was largely responsible for
corrupting the police, for turning athletic sports into a trade, and for
a general neglect of duty amongst those who indulged in it; that all
efforts to cope with it under the existing law had failed to restrict
it to any extent, including those of the trade unions, some of which
exclude from official positions any one known to be given to betting.
Excepting those witnesses who in some way, direct or indirect, were
interested in the professional betting business, there was a volume of
convincing testimony as to its baneful effects. A former prison chaplain,
through whose hands in ten years a hundred thousand persons had passed,
said that in one jail a whole wing had been set aside for prisoners
in connection with betting, which was now increasing more than ever.
Several years subsequently to this a carefully kept unofficial register
for Great Britain (which is probably a very imperfect one in the sense
of much understating the numbers from the difficulty of compiling a
comprehensive list by private effort) showed that in the previous five
and a half years no less than 80 cases of suicide, 321 embezzlements,
and 191 bankruptcies had appeared upon the records of the Courts owing
to professional betting, and it must be pointed out that probably not
nearly all the embezzlements resulted in prosecution. The Mayor of
Salford, for instance, told an influential meeting at Manchester that
he was responsible for the conduct of a large business in which several
cases of embezzlements had been discovered, but that in no instance
had a prosecution taken place. A continuation of these statistics for
the three following years, as quoted by the Archbishop of Canterbury
in the House of Lords on May 3, 1904, adds to the significance of the
figures by revealing that not only has the evil gone on, but that the
embezzlements have increased at the rate of 40 per cent. With regard to
the allegation that betting was often pleaded as an untruthful excuse in
the Police Courts, the senior Metropolitan Magistrate, who spoke with
twenty-five years’ experience, and others averred that this statement had
been investigated, and proved to have very little foundation; in the very
great majority of cases the magistrates having come to the conclusion
that betting was at the root of embezzlements.
Evil consequences, unfortunately, are by no means confined to these
immediate victims. Testimony as to the corruption of the police, rendered
possible by the large profits of the bookmakers, and the great proportion
of defaulting Post Office employees owing their ruin to the betting
system, seriously supplemented the main evidence. And the inquiries
since set on foot at New Scotland Yard with regard to the Metropolitan
Police give a pointed significance to the revelations made. The gigantic
monetary interest of the Post Office in the betting system appears in
one item of the evidence of Mr. Lamb, the secretary, who said that in
the previous September the department had sent 82 telegraphists to the
Doncaster race meeting, who dealt with 30,000 private telegrams of
persons attending the races, besides 184,000 words of racing news for the
press.
Betting used to be chiefly confined to the large centres of population,
but almost every town and village is now infected. A Chairman of
Committees of the House of Commons, in joining the society organised to
deal with the evil, stated that his doing so was owing to finding that it
had penetrated to the rustic neighbourhood adjoining his Devonshire home.
The strange increase in village telegrams on race days has become very
noticeable, and charges of tampering with messages to cheat bookmakers
are becoming quite common. Such facts, and others, incline those who
have studied the subject to consider that the estimate adopted by Sir
Robert Giffen at the last meeting of the British Association, in the
Economic Science Section, during a discussion on the nation’s wealth, of
£5,000,000 per annum as going into the pockets of bookmakers, is a very
conservative one.
As to the condition of the race-courses themselves, from the ruffianism
of the professional betting men and their hangers-on, interesting
revelations were made before the close of the nineteenth century by the
efforts of one of the great London daily newspapers. It is not needful
to quote the comments drawn forth by the journals friendly to reform, as
those in favour of the institution of the Turf are sufficiently pungent.
A few of these will suffice. Thus _The Field_, August 20, 1898:—
Those unacquainted with race-courses must stand aghast as they
read the extraordinary tale of misdoing that is unfolded day
by day.... A body of miscreants who are prepared to stop at
nothing in the way of violence so long as they attain their
object, and care not the least if they leave their victim
injured for life, as is sometimes the case. The scum that
formerly attended the prize-ring has turned its attention to
the most promising substitute.... It depends entirely upon the
efficiency and vigilance of the management and those it employs
by way of guardians, whether or not the rings are invaded by
those who have only to be numerically strong enough to do as
they please with the respectable element.
The meeting at Epsom is then criticised, but we must devote our little
space to the following, also from _The Field_:—
The goings-on at Brighton, both on the course and in the town,
have reached such a pitch that we have discontinued sending a
representative to report the racing. Sad to tell, almost as
much justification for such a course exists in connection with
Goodwood. This has been the happy hunting-ground of the thief
for very many years, but we doubt if matters ever reached the
pitch they did this year, the gangs of pickpockets working with
such impunity that an inoffensive visitor was bludgeoned on
the head actually in the very entrance to Tattersall’s ring.
Small wonder, then, when an act like this can be fearlessly
perpetrated at an aristocratic gathering like Goodwood, that it
should be repeated elsewhere.
Here is an extract from one of the letters which appeared at the time:—
Words fail to convey any idea of the ruffianism, robbers,
and welshing which took place at the so-called Grand Stand
at Alexandra Park on Saturday last. There were from two to
three hundred organised professional welshers, thieves, and
bullies, with few exceptions well known to the officials and
police and even to an occasional race-goer like myself. Woe to
the unfortunate individual who insisted on the payment of a
bet—a split skull dealt from behind, a scuffle, and robbery.
I have no hesitation in saying that the life of every man and
woman in that enclosure was absolutely at the mercy of this
organised and desperate gang, and a feeling of fear paralysed
the stoutest of us.
There were scores of such public communications. One racing correspondent
of a large provincial paper stated that he should never think of going
to the course without a revolver in his pocket. Of course the so-called
sporting and publicans’ papers tried to make out that these letters
were not genuine, or were exaggerated, but without exception they bear
on their face evidence of their reality. The writer of these lines,
however, ascertained the fact of their genuineness from the editor who
published them in one of the largest and oldest of our daily newspapers,
which has been by no means otherwise conspicuous in this phase of social
reform. We may be allowed to quote the following reflections, which
witness to the existence of this ruffianly condition of the Turf, from
Mr. George Gissing’s _Private Papers of Henry Rycroft_ (1903), pp. 43-44:—
To-day’s newspaper contains a yard or so of reading about a
spring horse-race. The sight of it fills me with loathing.
It brings to my mind that placard I saw at a station in
Surrey a year or two ago, advertising certain races in the
neighbourhood. Here is the poster as I copied it into my
notebook:—
“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.
GAMBLING
CARDS
In miscellaneous gambling, cards, harmless in themselves, are still
prominent. The game of Bridge amongst the wealthier classes is
responsible for reproducing many of the vicious situations we read of in
the chronicles of our forefathers. While Queen Victoria was lying dead,
one very prominent female society leader could not be got to abstain
from this form of gambling even for a brief space. At the aristocratic
mansion over which she presides guests must play. One young man of
moderate income suggested that his means were quite unequal to such
hazards as the hostess and her friends were accustomed to, but he was
given to understand that he could play or leave. He unhappily chose the
former alternative, and in a few hours lost half-a-year’s income. There
are hundreds of smaller imitators of this woman, whose husband ranks high
in the political world. The disgusting position is frequently created
of young girls, not discouraged from gambling by their parents, losing
money which they have difficulty in paying to men with whom they are
not otherwise well acquainted. In speaking to a young lady who moves
in society circles, and on inquiring with due diffidence as to her
knowledge of gambling among the friends of her family, she said, without
the slightest hesitation, “Oh, every one we know gambles.” One of the
speakers at the council meeting of a ladies’ association, of which Lady
Trevelyan is president, said that a society lady, on a friend observing
that £150 a year seemed a small allowance for her daughter, replied that
the latter was such a good Bridge player that she easily made £1000 a
year.
Amongst the poor, where horse-race betting does not prevail, cards,
to which juveniles are largely taking, as well as automatic machine
gambling, are often made the vehicle for disposing of their small means.
THE STOCK AND PRODUCE EXCHANGES
A very large proportion of the business done upon the Stock Exchange is
nothing else than gambling. No stock passes. It is merely gambling in
the rise or fall for differences. Here, as elsewhere, neglect, for which
the whole nation is to blame, has allowed matters to get into a groove,
and great difficulty will be found in getting out of it. In another
chapter suggestions are made, and if the proposed remedy is necessarily
a serious one for those whose business is to a great extent founded
upon an illegitimate basis, some of them at least feel that the present
system is indefensible, and the following pathetic extracts from a letter
written by a member of a leading Stock Exchange firm merely express
the conscientious misgivings of the best class of men there—misgivings
which are more or less shared by all but the hardened gamblers of the
establishment:—
The evils of speculation, in common with many more fellows
here, I much deplore; but at the same time, when three-fourths
of the business is of that nature, what is the alternative
to most Stock Exchange men? Either starvation or gaining a
livelihood by means which one’s conscience tells you to be
wrong; and human nature is not proof against the temptation.
That is the naked truth, not to mince matters; and God knows
it is an awful fact, to those who give any thought to these
things. I am perfectly certain that the majority of Stock
Exchange men loathe the business, and would be glad to get out
of it. The subject is never absent from my mind. I have felt in
a great strait over it for years. God grant that I may get out
of it somehow; but how, He only knows. It seems queer to write
like this to a stranger, but you have struck such a chord of
sympathy that it is a relief to unbosom one’s mind.
The above remarks also apply to the produce and metal exchanges. The
misery caused in Lancashire and elsewhere by American gamblers cornering
the cotton market is calling the attention of merchants to this branch of
the subject, and with a little goodwill on the part of the Governments
concerned there should be no insuperable difficulty in framing
regulations which will greatly hamper, if not destroy, the possibility in
future of such proceedings.
CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY
Thus in England, at the commencement of the twentieth century, the
world of society, commerce, finance, and athletic sport is saturated
with gambling, more or less veiled or entirely open. Individual and
family ruin from it in all classes is frequent; and there are thousands
of cases stopping short of this, but entailing, besides material loss
and suffering, the lowering of the moral and mental nature, thus
affecting the intellectual and religious fibre of the people. But the
evil to the nation does not stop here. Until lately, at all events, the
highest Courts of Law, as well as the lower ones, did not escape the
indirect taint, and even now politicians and office-holders, who would
be ostracised in Japan, continue to allow themselves, and very often
their households, to be deeply involved in gambling transactions in
their homes, their clubs, and with low practitioners of the race-course
ring, their children in numberless cases copying the evil habit. A young
heir to a peerage, a candidate for a seat in Parliament, whose father
is considered to be a great political light and would wish it to be
supposed that he is not without reforming zeal, although fencing with
the question of the betting ring, boasted to a companion of his sudden
acquisition of £2000, laughing at the idea of having worked for it, and
explained that it came from the bookmakers at one meeting. The public
services are corrupted, particularly the Police and the Post Office, the
latter institution rendering many unnecessary services to the gambling
system, in the profits of which it largely shares, and not making the
special efforts which we see in the United States and elsewhere to
hamper professional gambling. The nation as a whole is, it may be
hoped, too healthy in a moral sense to allow a further continuance of
this social plague without a great effort to grapple with it; but the
bitter experience of the nineteenth century demonstrates how futile it
would be to rely solely, or even to any great extent, upon the unaided
attempts of educational persuasion to root it out. These, indeed, must
not be relaxed, they must be increased and multiplied, and should be
supplemented by more extensive and systematic endeavours, aiming at
improved conditions of life for the poor, and further amelioration of
health, and opportunities for recreation; but betting and gambling
should also be made, as they can be made, by amended and better applied
legal regulations, far less profitable, and more difficult, dangerous,
and disgraceful, whether for the rich or the needy. There need be no
real interference with the liberty of the subject; for that liberty,
regarded in a true light, should not confer any licence to trade upon
the ignorance, weakness, or folly of others, which is the characteristic
of all gamesters, and not least of those belonging to the professional
betting system.
STOCK EXCHANGE GAMBLING
By A. J. WILSON