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:—

“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.