'Betting-shop' is vulgar, and we dislike vulgarity. 'Commission
Office,' 'Racing Bank,' 'Mr Hopposite Green's Office,'
'Betting-Office,'are the styles of announcement adopted by speculators
who open what low people call Betting-shops. The chosen designation is
usually painted in gold letter on a chocolate-coloured wire-gauze
blind, impervious to the view. A betting-office may display on its
small show-board two bronzed plaster horses, rampant, held by two
Ethiopian figures, nude; or it may prefer making a show of cigars.
Many offices have risen out of simple cigar-shops. When this is the
case, the tobacco business gives way, the slow trade and fast
profession not running well together. An official appearance is always
considered necessary. A partition, therefore, sufficiently high not to
be peered over, runs midway across the shop, surmounted with a rail.
By such means, visions are suggested to the intelligent mind of desks,
clerks, and, if the beholder has sufficient imagination, of bankers'
clerks. In the partition is an enlarged _pigeon_-hole--not far off,
may be supposed to lurk the hawk--through which are received
shillings, half-crowns; in fact, any kind of coin or notes, no sum
appearing inadmissible. The office is papered with a warm crimson
paper, to make it snug and comfortable, pleasant as a lounge, and
casting a genial glow upon the proceedings.
But the betting-lists are the attraction--these are the dice of the
betting-man: a section of one of the side-walls within the office is
devoted to them. They consist of long strips of paper--each race
having its own slip--on which are stated the odds against the horses.
Hasty and anxious are the glances which the speculator casts at the
betting-lists: he there sees which are the favourites; whether those
he has backed are advancing or retrograding; and he endeavours to
discover, by signs and testimonies, by all kinds of movements and
dodges, the knowing one's opinion. He will drop fishing words to other
gazers, will try to overhear whispered remarks, will sidle towards any
jockey-legged or ecurial--costumed individual, and aim more especially
at getting into the good graces of the betting-office keeper, who,
when his business is slack, comes forth from behind the partition and
from the duties of the pigeon-hole, to stretch his legs and hold
turf-converse. The betting-office keeper is the speculator's divinity.
The office itself is but the point where the ringing of the metal
takes place, where the actual business is more bindingly entered into;
but on great, or, as they are technically termed, grand days, there
will occur--what will also apply, perhaps, occasionally to grand
operas--very heavy operations. Large numbers of the speculators will
collect, forming themselves into knots and groups on the pavement, and
even in the roadway contiguous to the office. Here they appear a
motley congregation, a curious agglomeration of seediness. Seediness
is the prominent feature of the betting mass, as they are on such
occasions collected--seediness of dress and of character. Yet amongst
the groups are some better-looking kine, some who seem to fatten, and
who costume themselves in fully-napped cloth, and boast of
ostentatious pockets, and hats which advertise the owner as knowing a
thing or two. These may be touters to the office: some may be victims,
who have once won a stake. The latter now neglect their ordinary
calling, and pass the whole of their time in the purlieus of
betting-shops. As for the touters--betting-offices are not progressive
without the aid of touters--they are gentlemen who have in their time
worn many kinds of character, who have always existed one way or
another on the very outskirts of honesty, till some fine morning a
careless step brings them from that neutral ground into the domain of
the law, where they are laid hold of. They do not disdain their
adopted calling; they are not above assisting errand-boys to go in for
large stakes; they tempt apothecaries' apprentices by prospects of
being able to come out. They know likewise the best horses, and which
are sure to win.
But there are numbers of willing, untutored betting-men, who go in of
their own accord--'quite promiscuous.' They belong to the class of
petty tradesmen, and perhaps there are steady workmen and comfortably
incomed clerks among them; although it is the tradesmen who are most
numerous, and who give colour to the whole body. There is Macwait, the
cheap baker, he contributes his quota weekly to the betting-shop: he
has a strong desire to touch a twenty-pound stake. Whetcoles, the
potato salesman, has given up a lucrative addition to his regular
business--the purveying of oysters--for the sake of having more time
to attend the office. Nimblecut, the hairdresser, has been
endeavouring to raise his charge for shaving one half-penny per chin,
to be enabled to speculate more largely. Shavings, journeyman
carpenter, calculates upon clearing considerably more by 'Sister to
Swindler' than a year's interest from the savings-bank. There are
thousands of similarly circumstanced speculators: they make a daily,
if not more frequent promenade to the betting-office; and on the days
when the races come off, they may be observed in shoals, nodding and
winking knowingly as they pass one another. Some are seen with jocular
countenances, and pass for pleasant fellows: they are impressed with
the idea that their horses are looking up. In others, the jocular
expression has passed away, and the philosophical observer sets them
down as melancholy individuals, given to castigating their wives, and
verging dogwards.
Betting-men--those who take a pride in their profession--assume
generally a looseness of style: there may be an appropriateness in
this, considering the mercurial contents of their pockets. In walking,
a freedom of gait, approaching the swagger, is generally adopted;
cigar-smoking at the office door is considered respectable; hands may
be inserted _ad libitum_ in pockets, and a primary coloured 'kerchief
worn mildly. The individual is usually seen by the observant public
making up his book. But the evidence of shrewdness consists in
familiarity with the technicalities of turf-lore; without this,
costume is of no use. The better must be well up to the jockeys'
names, and those of the horses--of the races they have run--of Day's
stable--of Scott's ditto--must know when the cup or 2000-guinea stakes
are run for. His vocabulary comprises such words as outsiders,
winners, two-year old, lame ducks, and bad books. He sometimes talks
loudly, although, for the most part, he delights in a close, earnest,
confidential, suppressed tone. There is nothing a better prides
himself on more than being in the possession of some, to the common
herd, unattainable secret--something only to be obtained once in a
lifetime, and then only after severe losses--a secret brought out by
some train of fortuitous and most intricately-woven events. It comes
through a line of ingenious, quickwitted, up-to-everything
communicators, and is made known proximately to the fortunate
possessor by a diplomatic potman, who waits in a room frequented by a
groom, who pumped it out of a stable-boy, who----It is not improbable
that the information has somewhat deteriorated in its journeyings
through mews and along dung-heaps: it is possible, when it comes to be
made use of, it may be found very expensive in its application.
The turf speculator must possess a frank and willing imagination: he
must calculate upon his account at the betting-shop, as he would upon
so much being to his credit at a banker's; he must consider the office
cheques with which his pocket-book is overflowing, as at par with
bank-notes; he need keep but little gold and silver, as it is far
better to know that it is producing a highly-profitable percentage.
Should he be visited by any momentary fits of depression, he may draw
forth his portfolio, and gratify his eyes with the contemplation of
certificates for fives, and twenties, and fifties.
We must not pass over a class of speculators who bet, and yet who are
not true betting-men: they do not wish to be seen in betting-shops,
yet cannot keep away. They are not loungers, for they may be observed
passing along the thoroughfare seemingly with all desirable intentness
upon their daily business; but they suddenly disappear as they arrive
at the door of the betting-shop. These are your respectable men;
worthy, solid, family men. But it is not easy to enter a betting-shop,
and avoid rubbing against some clinging matter. Betting-men generally
are not nice in their sensibilities; and perhaps on a fine Sunday
morning, proceeding with his family to the parish church, our Pharisee
may receive a tip from some unshaven, strong-countenanced _sans
culotte_, which may cause his nerves to tingle for the rest of the
day.
But there is also a light, flimsy, fly-away-kind of speculator, a
May-day betting-man--a youth fresh, perhaps, from school and the
country, with whom his friends have hardly yet made up their minds
what to do--who is at present seeing as much as he can see of town,
upon what he finds decidedly small means. He has an ambition to appear
fast; has of course a great admiration for fast people; but is at
present young and fresh-coloured, and cannot, with all his endeavours,
make himself appear less innocent and good-natured than he is. He has
strained his purse in a bet, has betted on a winning horse, and has
won five pounds. This would perhaps have fixed him for life as a
speculator; but the money burns in his pocket. Before he can make up
his mind to lay out his winnings on fresh bets, he must have a Hansom
for the day. He decorates himself in his light-coloured paletot, blue
neck-tie, and last dickey--drives to Regent Street to purchase
cigars--to an oyster-shop redolent of saw-dust and lobsters--rigs a
very light pair of kids--drives to, and alarms by his fast appearance,
a few of his friends, who forthwith write off long woolly letters to
relations in the country. He is accordingly cited to appear at home,
where he becomes a respected local junior clerk in a Welsh mining
company.
There are various kinds of betting-offices. Some are speculative,
May-fly offices, open to-day and shut to-morrow--offices that will bet
any way, and against anything--that will accommodate themselves to any
odds--receive any sum they can get, small or large; and should a
misfortune occur, such as the wrong horse winning, forget to open next
day. These are but second-rate offices. The money-making, prosperous
betting-office is quite a different thing. It is not advisable for
concerns which intend making thousands in a few years, to pay the
superintendents liberally, and to keep well-clothed touters--to
conduct themselves, in short, like speculative offices. They must not
depend entirely upon chance. Chance is very well for betting-men, but
will not do for the respectable betting-office keepers, who are the
stakeholders.
The plan adopted is a very simple one, but ingenious in its
simplicity. The betting-office takes a great dislike in its own mind
to a particular horse, the favourite of the betting-men. It makes bets
against that horse, which amount in the aggregate to a fortune; and
then it _buys_ the object of its frantic dislike. This being effected,
the horse of course loses, and the office wins. How could it be
otherwise? Would you have a horse win against its owner's interest?
The thing being settled, the office, in order to ascertain the amount
of its winnings, has only to deduct the price of the horse from its
aggregate bets, and arrange the remainder in a line of perhaps five
figures. Whereupon the betting-men grow seedier and more seedy; some
of the more mercurial go off in a fit of apoplectic amazement; some
betake themselves to Waterloo Stairs on a moonless night; some proceed
to the Diggings, some to St Luke's, and some to the dogs; some become
so unsteady, that they sign the wrong name to a draft, or enter the
wrong house at night, or are detected in a crowd with their hand in
the wrong man's pocket. But by degrees everything comes right again.
The insane are shut up--the desperate transported--the dead
buried--the deserted families carted to the workhouse; and the
betting-office goes on as before.