another when county court summonses would come to their house,
but so long as their husbands did not see the papers, they’d
put off the day of reckoning a bit longer.
My wife says they’d run round to one another’s houses and say,
“I’m in a deal of trouble, will you oblige me to-day by taking
a pair of blankets off the Clothing Company and pledge them
for me, and I’ll pay you back when I can? And if you get into
trouble some day, I’ll help you out if you’ll just oblige me
this once.” My wife knew nothing about such ways afore we came
to live in this street, but she were a quick learner, and got
into it like a lad gets into his new sums when he gets put up a
standard at school.
It’s none so very hard when it’s put plain—horses, packman,
pawn-shop, and a county court; and then over again, more
horses, more packmen, more pawn-shops, and more county court.
Sorry to trouble you with such a long yarn, but I put it to
you as a practical question, How am I to get out of this fix?
If I go to gaol I lose my work, and rent’s running on, and
grocery bills and coal bills are running on, for seven bairns
can’t be fed on air, and I am told going to gaol does not clear
off the whole of the bill to these pedlar fellows, but only a
little bit of the back payments, and you may be taken again as
soon as you come out for another bit. I put it to you plain,
What is a man in my circumstances to do?
Faced with a similar question, what would the reader do? Circumstances
like these indicate only too clearly why it is that there is a social
problem. The heart of all happiness and integrity in life resides in
the home, and when anything comes between the mutual understanding and
confidence that alone makes home life possible, we may be sure that evils
undreamt of before will find an entrance into the home.
The insidious nature of the evil is best illustrated from the fact that
almost every week the newspapers record the downfall of some individual
whom the public had thought above suspicion. Similar instances occur in
the humbler walks of life. The present writer knows of instances in which
cottages sometimes lent for religious services were also on occasion used
as betting centres. Here is an extract from the letter of a reliable
correspondent:—
A bookmaker made one woman in a street his friend. She would
receive the money for him, and gradually entice many to join.
In my own district there the most respectable looking home
was used in this way. The owner, a widow woman, was perfectly
clean and tidy, no gossip, and never talking at the door. She
allowed her son first, and then she herself took it up, and
just because in all other ways she was respectable, the other
women were snared into thinking less of the sin.
Another feature which calls for comment is the fact that girls are either
encouraged by their employers, or by their fellow-servants, to indulge in
betting. Deaconess Clarkson of Durham mentions the case of a girl, sent
to service from a “Friendless Girls’ Home,” failing to repay her monthly
instalment for her outfit. On being asked the reason, the girl maintained
that her mistress had persuaded her to put it on a horse.
This other instance would be ludicrous if it were not pathetic. The first
night a young girl spent in service she was asked by the butler to give
half-a-crown for the sweep. She asked why she should pay the sweep! but
in order to avoid giving offence gave him the money. The parlour-maid
“lifted” the sweep, amounting to 37s. 6d., when the girl understood what
the butler had meant.
We saw from the evidence of Mr. Luke Sharp that this evil was not
confined to the North, and it might be well to draw attention to a
reference to similar practices elsewhere. Writing in the _Nineteenth
Century_ recently, a writer said:—
A typical Lancashire woman of the lower class told me that
trade was very bad in her district, mostly because the women
bet a shilling on nearly every race, and they take th’ bread
out of th’ children’s mouths to obtain the shillings. That
was a thing unknown in Lancashire fifteen years ago, as it
was also for women to be seen drinking in the public-houses;
and half-a-dozen fellow-travellers in the same carriage all
confirmed her statement.
It might be interesting to give the actual figures for one instance in
which a cottage in a working-class district in York was carefully watched
for some fourteen hours, spread over five days. Those entering to make
bets were as follows:—
Men. Women. Boys. Girls.
First day 84 4 12 3
Second day 97 6 26 10
Third day 109 7 33 6
Fourth day 72 4 13 5
Fifth day 29 1 12 2
--- -- -- --
391 22 96 26
=== == == ==
It will readily be seen that a very significant proportion of those
entering the cottage were women, boys, or girls.
So far we have dealt almost entirely with the prevalence of the practice
among working women, and that for obvious reasons. In other classes of
society there is, of course, as much betting on horses as among working
women, and for larger amounts. In other ways, too, there is very much to
be deplored. Dean Lefroy, speaking in Norwich Cathedral in June of 1904,
created quite a sensation by a strong denunciation of bridge gambling.
The condemnation elicited some facts, all proving the prevalence of the
evil.
No more mean or despicable an outrage of the ordinary canons of
hospitality can be conceived, than that so well illustrated in an extract
from a recent address by Ian Maclaren:—
I want [he said] from this place to offer my protest against
bridge parties, which are gathered together simply and solely
not for playing a game but for winning money by gambling.
Conceive of one case, and I only mention one. A young married
lady is asked to go and stay in a country house by a lady older
than herself, and an old friend of the family. Her husband
cannot go with her, but she goes down to spend the week-end.
Bridge is played, and, although she knows a little about it,
she excuses herself as not being a sufficiently good player. It
is pointed out that every one must play, and that no doubt she
will do well enough. She has a suspicion that not only money
is risked on the game, but that it is risked to a considerable
amount. She is assured that it is nothing. At the close of the
evening she discovers that she has lost £35. Of course far
greater sums than that are lost, but that is a great deal for
a young married lady, the wife of a professional man, to lose.
She has not the money to pay. She goes home, and very properly
tells her husband the whole story. He sends a cheque to the
hostess, and he states distinctly in the letter that a woman
who would ask a woman younger than herself, and specially under
her charge, to play at bridge under such circumstances was
doing nothing more or less than keeping a gambling-house....
I ask you whether you would like your wife to be involved in
this vortex of gambling, and if you are prepared to face not
the financial but the moral consequences?... I hope this appeal
will lead you to consider the position, and take a firm stand
against an insidious because a very fascinating and fashionable
evil.
The incident referred to is no uncommon experience, and reveals feelings
alien to the fine spirit of hospitality so common to British life, and
incidentally exhibits the blighting effect of the greed of money upon the
life of society.
The gaming-house proper is a more sordid consideration, which is only
mentioned to show that its existence has not been forgotten. More often
than not it is managed by a woman, and the police raids reveal over and
over again that such houses are the very sink of crime and vice.
From what has been written it will be seen that the evil has spread very
insidiously into all ranks of society. The working woman gambles with the
wage of her husband, the society woman with her dress allowance or her
husband’s income, the spinster with stocks and shares through her lawyer,
and the honestly intentioned though ill-advised charitable lady with
raffle tickets at church bazaars. By refusing to participate in those
lotteries women have one very obvious way of discountenancing an immoral
method of raising money.
Remedial measures for the evil are suggested in another article in this
book, but we would draw attention to one other remedy which would scotch
the evil among women, viz. a resuscitation of the ideals of home life.
“The home,” said the late Mr. Moody, “was founded before the Church, and
you in Britain stand more in need of homes than you do of churches.” The
failure of home is the failure of the parents to realise its duties and
its responsibilities. And the failure to recognise these is traceable
to the failure to recognise the value of a home religion. There is no
home problem where there is true religion, and there is no power which
keeps more alive the best qualities of human kind. Without it there
can be neither that affection nor respect which makes it possible for
the children of the home to remain attached to it, and every child
induced by the example at home to take up the practice of betting is a
disintegrating factor in that happiness which alone can bring stability
and respect to character. This article will not have been written in vain
if it helps in any way to reinvigorate and refresh the home ideal.
CRIME AND GAMBLING
By CANON HORSLEY
When I jot down in 1905 my impressions and observations as regards
betting (chiefly on horse races) as one of the causes of various forms
of crime, and of the type of character that thinks little of crime,
and readily commits it on the lightest temptation or provocation, I
am at first surprised to see how little mention there is of it in a
book entitled _Jottings from Jail_ that I published in 1887, after ten
years’ experience in Clerkenwell Prison. The moral I draw is not that
I ignored it amongst the many causes of criminality and of crime, nor
that I considered it unimportant in comparison with the far more common
cause—that is intemperance; but rather that the evil has been increasing
by leaps and bounds since that decade, beginning in 1876, which I spent
in prison as a young student of criminology. Nor indeed is there so much
as might be expected in my later book _Prisons and Provinces_, although
therein, when enumerating “ten desirable reforms” that stood out clearly
in my retrospect, I find the following passage:—
5. The censorship of the press in the matter of publication of
the unnecessary and corrupting details of divorce proceedings
and suicides and of betting lists. Editors cannot be the moral
prophets of the age while they keep a sporting prophet and
while in bondage to advertisers and the lowest classes of their
readers. Some crime is State-caused, much is paper-caused.
“Crime is condensed beer,” occurred to me as a dictum for which there was
far too much justification; but “Crime is the fruit of betting,” neither
seemed to me then, nor seems to me now, a tenable adage.
And yet how painfully the directness of the path from betting to bondage,
from Epsom to the Old Bailey, was brought before me each month for those
ten years. Before each session of the Central Criminal Court a procession
of young postmen for trial, and destined in those days almost inevitably
to penal servitude for their first crime, showed how good character,
fair education, constant and honourable employment, and sobriety, had
all been inoperative against the temptation to steal letters containing
money. And why the theft? In almost every case it was that they had
been led into betting on horse-races, had lost, and had been pressed
for the money by the bookmakers under threats of exposure. This was
an ever-recurring object-lesson on crime as a product of betting, but
the most striking instance I recall was when three Chief Inspectors of
Scotland Yard—Bishops in their profession—were charged and sentenced
in consequence of their having allowed themselves to be drawn under
the influence of some Turf criminals of the most dangerous type. Then
indeed one thought, If those things are done in the green tree, what
shall be done in the dry? If these experienced men of the world, with
professional knowledge of the tricks of the hangers-on of the Turf, can
be drawn into the vortex, what can we expect of the average silly and
ill-paid clerk, who has some excuse for his feverish desire to add to his
inadequate income, though at the expense of others? And telegraph clerks
again became prisoners through their special temptations. The straight
tip for which a shilling had been paid passed through their hands and
added them gratuitously to the ranks of the cognoscenti. Then later in
the day came from the same Turf agent the straighter tip to the smaller
circle of artisans and shopmen who had paid half-a-crown, and later
still the straightest tip to the innermost circle of his customers who
had paid ten shillings. Not all clerks would have sense and integrity
enough not to think that here was a road to fortune made for them by
the expert knowledge of some and the credulity of others. So too, after
Derby Day, amongst the various crimes—pocket-picking, burglary, assaults,
embezzlements—that kept dropping in after and in consequence of that day,
attempts at suicide found their place. The first case that meets my eye
in some old prison notes is: “Barman, 22, lost place for giving drink
away; lost his savings (£80) at betting on horse-races; therefore ‘had
the miserables’ and attempted suicide.” So a London coroner, interviewed
on the subject of an epidemic of suicide, said: “I always look for
suicides after the Derby. After that event you always find that a
certain number of shop-assistants have absconded, and a number of other
people have committed suicide. They belong to a class of people—much too
numerous nowadays—who want to get money without working for it. They
fail, and then they go and jump into the river, or something of that
sort. You will always find some suicides after Derby Week.” And it should
be remembered that not only in London, but all over the world, does Derby
Day represent the acme of interest and of temptation, and produce the
maximum of evil sequelæ. And, again, it struck me forcibly that betting
produced one of the most hopeless types of prisoner with which a prison
chaplain could have to deal. The men habitually on the Turf seemed to be
the very incarnation of cunning and suspicion and selfishness. They had
one prayer and one creed: “Give me this day my brother’s daily bread,”
and “Do everybody, and take care they don’t do you.”
What I have said will show that I was not, nor could be, ignorant of
the existence of the vice as one of the chief causes of crime during
the ten years, 1876-1886, when I was daily conversing with prisoners.
But from all I have seen, read, and heard since, and not least from
conferences with present-day prison officials, I am convinced that
betting has so largely increased of late years that its effects are much
more obvious in prison. I had many sad cases of the ruin of those who
were dependent entirely on character for employment, but had lost that
character through the embezzlement that betting losses had prompted.
But when in 1902 I, as one of the Committee appointed by the Rochester
Diocesan Conference to investigate the question, had before me one of our
Metropolitan police magistrates, to whose court come almost exclusively
the labouring and the shop-tending classes, he made deliberately the very
strong statement that, of recent years, he had hardly ever had a case
of embezzlement before him which was not connected, either directly or
_au fond_, with betting. Nor would he admit that this plea of betting
was merely an excuse put forward without real cause. On the contrary,
careful inquiry into the cases proved conclusively that the plea was a
true one. And to the same Committee Mr. Hawke stated that the House of
Lords’ Commission by evidence proved conclusively that a large proportion
of the embezzlement of the country was due to betting with bookmakers
and to professional betting. And here are a few typical cases that came
close together in point of time. The first was the notorious one of the
quiet bank clerk Goudie, who embezzled £170,000. He had got into the
hands of bookmakers, and they had compelled him to go on by threats of
exposure, after the common practice of their kind. The next is that of
a labourer’s wife, charged with attempting suicide and stealing shoes.
She had pledged them to endeavour to recover money lost on horse-races.
The police constable seized the poison intended for herself and her
children. Her husband was not aware of her betting. The third is that
of a caretaker of a chapel near me, who had stolen £60 in bank notes,
and set up the plea that he had got them at the Alexandra Park and the
Epsom Races. Next comes a clerk who obtained fifteen guineas by a forged
telegram. When only seventeen he made the acquaintance of a bookmaker who
would continue business with him in spite of his father’s remonstrances.
The judge commented on the fact that it was this same bookmaker whom he
had now cheated, and by whom he was prosecuted and got twelve months’
hard labour. The next is a dispenser who embezzled £11 from the doctor
who employed him. His downfall was accounted for by betting, and his
solicitor offered to give the names of the bookmakers with whom he had
been betting, in consequence of whose threats of exposure he had stolen
to pay them. Another clerk embezzled £1. In his absence from the office
the manager’s suspicions were aroused by a street loafer bringing a
betting account for the clerk showing a large amount owing. He lost
fifteen years’ good character, and got three months’ hard labour. And
next comes a postman who, in the words of the Recorder, “had been engaged
in a systematic robbery of the public service in order to engage in
transactions on the Turf.” He got six months, but in my time would almost
certainly have had five years’ penal servitude, as such offences on the
part of postal officials were dealt with then with uniform severity. Had
one to labour the point, a press-cutting agency would enable one to fill
pages with typical cases arising in any week, especially during what
is called the flat-racing season, when, as a friend of mine engaged on
a London evening paper tells me, the circulation was found on inquiry
to increase by 50,000 per diem from the time of the Lincoln Handicap.
The Lords’ Committee were told by Sir A. de Rutzen, after twenty-five
years’ experience of the crime of London, that “more mischief was brought
about by betting than by almost any other cause, especially street
betting, which could very well be put down.... From personal knowledge,
he could say that the evil arising from betting was as deep-seated
as it was possible to be. In cases were persons were prosecuted for
embezzlement and betting was mentioned as the cause, he was in the habit
of making inquiries, which invariably confirmed the statements.” Another
Metropolitan magistrate deplored that he entirely concurred with what Sir
Albert had said, and added that where the crime had been one of fraud or
embezzlement he had invariably found that betting had been at the bottom
of it. Bankruptcy may be a misfortune, but is very frequently a social
crime, and on this I would only refer to the evidence given before the
Lords by Mr. Luke Sharp, Official Receiver for Birmingham, as to betting
as a cause of bankruptcy, and would remark that, carrying my mind back
over a series of years, I cannot remember a case of the bankruptcy of
a trader known personally to me in which either drink or betting, and
commonly both conjoined, was not the cause, although either or both were
often unsuspected until the crash came.
I may add, although facts and figures are here more difficult—and,
indeed, largely impossible to produce—that my fourteen years’ experience
as a Metropolitan Guardian of the Poor, during ten of which I have been
Chairman of a workhouse containing over 1300 inmates, is that betting now
stands only next to intemperance amongst males as a cause of pauperism.
The habit cannot be eradicated even in old age and the seclusion of
an infirm ward, and bets are made in surreptitious pence when the
larger sums and more frequent opportunities of yore are impossible.
The fascination of drunkenness, which is decreasing, is great: that of
betting, which is increasing by leaps and bounds, is greater. The evil
effects of intemperance are to some extent confined to the individual;
those of betting are rarely so confined.
THE DELUDED SPORTSMAN
By A BOOKMAKER
So very much public attention has recently been called to betting, more
particularly as applied to and in connection with horse-racing and the
backing of horses, that I thought I would sit down and write a little of
my experiences in respect thereto and give my unprejudiced views upon
the subject. Yes!—an old bookmaker’s views—illustrated by facts and
circumstances; bearing in mind that, as I believe, this is the first
instance of a bookie’s confession of the “game,” and so is, I suppose, a
novelty.
I am penning these few lines just as the matter comes across my mind
and without any attempt at literary or even logical merit—a plain,
unvarnished life-tale, as it were—and in so doing I hope to point out
certain means that might improve the Turf business and free it from the
fearful odium it is now in; and secondly—and let me say my main and
principal reason for rushing into print is for the benefit of and a guide
to small backers. By “small backers” I mean those who go in the cheap
enclosures at race meetings, and more particularly I mean stay-at-home
backers (or let me call them, as they would wish to be designated,
“small sportsmen”), who make bets on horse-racing from say two or three
shillings to a few pounds daily and habitually. The large backers can
take care of themselves, but my advice equally applies to them, and they
would do well to follow it.
I am getting an old man, and have been a betting man and bookmaker all my
life, so to speak. My parents were poor people, but respectable. I had
a National School education. When I was about twelve years of age I was
turned out in the world as an errand-boy at 1s. 6d. a week in a general
warehouse. I stayed there for a number of years, until at nineteen years
of age I was a full-blown warehouseman earning £1 per week! I was a
sharp, intelligent young fellow, kept my eyes and ears open, which, I can
tell you, I have done all my life (you need to as a bookie, I can tell),
and I soon made up my mind that the quid a week in a stuffy warehouse,
long hours, hard work, and little prospect of “going ahead,” would not
suit me. A lot of my chums used to “horse-race,” “put a bit on,” “get
up sweepstakes,” and go to a race meeting now and again. In this way I
was first introduced to a race-course, and was successful in winning a
bit now and then, but as sure as faith losing it again, and more too.
My first impression of a race meeting was a very bad one, for I could
see that it was a vast assembly of “wrong uns” to the backbones—thieves,
sharps, pickpockets, lowest of the low ruffians and scoundrels—my opinion
is but little better of the present race meetings. My brother bookies
would endorse my candid opinion, I am sure. The race meetings of the
present time, of course, are far superior in comfort and convenience to
the old meetings, but the same villainy and cheating is ever rampant; but
let us call it now “refined rascality.”
Well, I was wide enough awake to soon see that “backing” was no good,
but that bookmaker was the “game.” I soon found a way to start with a
pal similarly inclined in views. I wasn’t going to stick at a quid a
week when I could see ten times that sum easily to be made. At that time
bookies were allowed to rig up in any costume they liked, so we had red
waistcoats, white plush hats, blue and green parti-coloured coats, etc.
etc.