odds against the various horses in stentorian tones, to invite the It will be observed that it is essential for the conduct of business that the identification of the ticket with the bet be capable of being effected with the greatest celerity. Racecourse bookmaking is carried on for the most part before a large public. Though welshing and fraudulent conduct do sometimes occur, the police and racecourse authorities have no difficulty in dealing with them. The powers of the existing law are sufficient. (c) The street bookmaker adopts the following modus operandi : He sometimes accepts the bet himself, but generally employs betting agents to effect the bets, so as to avoid not so much the fine imposed for a first or second offence as the risk of imprisonment for himself. A man doing a fair business will employ four or five betting agents, who perambulate certain particular streets or places in a town on race days at certain particular times, say, between 11 a.m. and 1.30 p.m. The extent of streets traversed is comparatively small, but the customers know where to find the betting agent at the particular time. The backer, having selected the horse or horses he wishes to back for that day, simply writes its or their name or names on a piece of paper (known as a betting slip), together with the name of the race, the amounts of the bets against the respective horses and his own nom de plume or the name (not his own) by which he is known to the bookmaker. He then wraps up in the slip the total amount of money staked and surreptitiously passes the slip and the money to the betting agent as they pass in the street. The bets are all at starting price. The backer receives no ticket or receipt. The slips are taken to the bookmaker or are collected by runners on his behalf from the betting agents and are sorted out by 402-5; Cald well, 780 Bigham. 1366 8: Denton, 8911. him at some secret room or sometimes in his own house. Late in the afternoon, after the evening papers have announced the winners and the starting prices, the amounts of the winning bets, together with the stakes, are paid over to the winners. Here again it will be seen that the nature of the business requires that it must be carried on with scrupulous honesty or the bookmaker's business will disappear. On the evidence before Your Thompson Committee it is so carried on, and though bookmakers sometimes fail to pay out, owing to their heavy losses, it would seem that the police have few complaints of street bookmakers collecting the stakes and not paying the winners, though some such cases do occur. Under the Street Betting Act of 1906 magistrates have power to retain or destroy betting slips found on an accused bookmaker or in his possession. Some avail themselves of this power, fining the bookmaker, but at the same time, by destroying the slips, putting it out of his power to pay his losses, which sometimes run into £100 or more, as all evidence of the winning bets is destroyed, with the result that the winners cannot be paid, and out of their money the bookmaker not only pays his fine, but makes a large profit in addition. The whole of the street bookmaker's business being illegal, extraordinary efforts have to be made to organise it so as to defeat the vigilance of the police, to whom alone is entrusted the duty of suppressing it. The business, however, is so lucrative, of such vast dimensions and so steadily increasing in volume that this organisation has been perfected to a marvellous degree. Each betting agent is provided at the expense of the bookmaker with a number of outlookers (often four or five) whose sole duty it is to watch the police and warn the agent of the presence in the vicinity of any policeman or of any stranger who might possibly be a policeman or detective in disguise. It is the duty of these outlookers to make themselves aware of and defeat the ruses of the police, and in some cases they even attend the Police Court so as to make themselves acquainted with the features of Bigham, 1386-8. any new detective or police officer who may have a case of street betting in their district coming on for hearing. Caldwell, 811: 443-8: Cald Evans, 5098 Croll, 4823-4: and cf. Benson Perkins, 5671; The police witnesses selected from various parts of the Thompson, country were unanimous in stating that in street betting cases well, 786 alone among crimes the sympathy and active assistance of the Bigham, 1573-6; general public in the neighbourhood is with the bettor, 5109. See also whether bookmaker or backer, and against the police. No assistance is given to the police; on the contrary, obstacles are put in their way and every assistance, and particularly warning of the presence of the police, is given to the bettors by all who happen to be present in the street. Many of the witnesses account for this attitude of the public by the widespread feeling Blackwell, 9937-8. Thompson, 700; 797, 1093-8, 1180-2; Bigham, Caldwell, 785- against the inequality of the laws, under which the rich man can bet legally while the poor man cannot without committing an offence; also by the fact that the large mass of such public do not believe and will not consider a bet to be a crime, or even morally wrong. Be this as it may, the street bookmakers have perfected 7290-3; a system which gives them practical immunity from the law, and and of Randall, the fact is clearly proved before Your Committee that under the Gulland, 6272- existing law the suppression of street betting is impossible. 6934-7; Lyttel- Stephen, 4048-53, 4085-90; 91. Bigham, 1570-2, 1632-40. Caldwell, 755-762; Bigham, 1322 et seq.; Croll, 465560; Evans, 5213; Green, 6854-5; Denton, 8839-44; Coates, 9174-5. Caldwell, 749-751, 1277-82; Bigham, 1341 et seq.; Croll, 45924; Evans, 5216; Green, 6769-76; Denton, 8973. Other reasons are, in the opinion of Your Committee, that few police officers are mentally equipped for this very difficult job; that many of them sympathise with betting, numbers of them make bets themselves when off duty, and that to nearly all the duty of hunting street bookmakers is distasteful-indeed, hateful. In case of Police Court proceedings, the bookmaker pays all the fines and costs incurred in respect of his betting agents and outlookers. To avoid the higher fines most of these agents are discharged after a first conviction, though a specially good man may be kept on. No one, however, is kept on after a second conviction, as the bookmaker would incur the risk of being saddled with the maintenance of the agent's wife and family while the agent was serving a term of imprisonment. The result is that after a conviction a betting agent or outlooker removes to pastures new and is taken on by another bookmaker in a district where he is not known to the magistrates or police. In addition to the employment of betting agents to make bets and collect slips-who are in his regular employment at weekly wages the street bookmaker accepts bets from a number of other persons who collect them on commission. Numbers of small shopkeepers, such as as hairdressers, tobacconists, newspaper sellers, confectioners, &c., are in the habit of receiving betting slips on behalf of a bookmaker. In numerous cases the betting business exceeds the legitimate business, and in many the latter is merely a cloak for the former. It is not too much to say that our industrial areas are permeated with these secret and illegal betting houses. Again, nearly every street bookmaker has an agent or agents, both in towns and in rural areas, who, in addition to their own occupation, run as a side line the collection of betting slips for him and are remunerated solely by commission on the stakes received. Further, so prevalent is street betting that the street bookmakers in the neighbourhood of large factories, engineering shops, shipbuilding yards, mines, &c., employ one or more of the employees to collect betting slips for them from his fellow workmen and women. Indeed, it is stated that there is scarcely a works in the country employing more than 20 workmen where one is not a bookmaker's agent, and this Your Committee believe to be near the truth. The evidence also establishes the fact that women are betting to a very large and steadily increasing extent, that in textile. mills betting is prevalent, that female domestic servants bet in large numbers, and, in fact, that women of all classes are resorting to this form of betting. It is certain that the street bookmakers are so thoroughly Bigham, 1353-60, organised that within recent years they and their agents have 1789; begun a system of canvassing the homes of the artisan classes, Randall, mainly between 9 and 11 a.m. (before they perambulate the 4032; Croll, 4650-4; streets), and inducing the women to bet. This is most pernicious, as it can only be done out of the housekeeping money and probably 8; Denton, without the husband's knowledge. Evans, 5222 8865-8. 1317-21, 1370; Evans 5127-30; Children-that is, boys and girls under sixteen years of age- Caldwell, are largely used all over the county as messengers to carry the 767; betting slips of their parents to the bookmaker. They readily Bigham, learn the business and some take to betting themselves. It is not possible to say the extent to which this is carried on, but it is undoubted that bookmakers will and do bet with children, and 5194-5; Your Committee had evidence in one case that in a London elementary school boys of ten and twelve were buying "Hall's Tips" and were betting in sums of threepence and sixpence with a bookmaker. Green, 67667; Denton, 8845-8. "x." 8720 65. Lastly, there is some bookmaking done in public-houses, but Thompson, in cases where it is done it is generally without the knowledge of 270-317,633 the licensee. The fear of the loss of his licence makes the licensee very careful, and with this assistance the police are well able to deal with this class of betting. 15. At this stage the following comments occur to Your Committee: The continual breaking of the law by millions of people by betting in the streets, the surreptitious passing of the slips and the constant endeavour to avoid the police must have a most demoralising effect on character and establish a general weakening of respect for the law. The canvassing of women, especially in the absence of their husbands, the employment of children as messengers to carry betting slips and thus teaching children to bet, the establishment of betting agents in works, etc., to encourage betting for the payment of commission, and the betting with children on their own account, are a very great moral danger to the rising generation. The permeation of the industrial districts by illegal betting houses is most undesirable from a moral point of view, and more so by their being secret and known to be illegal. CONCLUSION. 16. In the opinion of Your Committee the imposition of a duty on betting is practicable, but the impending dissolution of Parliament has prevented Your Committee from sufficiently considering the remaining paragraphs of the Chairman's Draft Report. |