THE DEVIL IS COME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 135, 9 June 1932, Page 7

THE DEVIL IS COME.

SUBURBIA SHOCKED BY TOTE. LONDON, June 2. "Wo don't want to see Streatham, a typical London middle-class suburb, become one of Satan's seats," says Rev. A. S. Hullah, a local Wesleyan clergymn.n. Mr. Hullah is leading a Church campaign against the invasion of a new tote club, the first of a chain planned for the suburbs and provinces and connected with a head office of a West End London Club. The new club announces whist drives, boxing, dancing, billiards and a bar for members who subscribe 1/, also the facilities of the tote similar to those in West End clubs, with a minimum bet of 2/. The tote will at first be restricted to horse races, but will later include greyhounds. It is announced that 400 members joined on the opening day, May 16, and 50 a day have joined since. Many women have been attracted by the security and comparative respectability of tote betting.

The local bookmakers are indignant at the tote's intrusion, and declare that it will kill suburban betting. Other interests are raising the question of its legality, and the matter is likely to load to another of those paradoxical disputes concerning the English betting laws.

The tote club authorities declare that legal opinion favours them, as they are running the same system as in the West End. Its opponents fay that the 1/ subscription is a mere evasion of the law which legalised the tote on racecourses only, although the law Courts haye. since ruled that totes may be established anywhere.