BETTING TRICK IN BRITAIN
BOOKMAKERS’ LINE CUT
(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, July 18. The “Daily Mail’’ says a racecourse gang cut the bookmakers’ private betting line from the Bath (Somerset) racecourse on Thursday in an attempt to win £250,000 on an unknown French horse, Francasal, which won the first race at odds of 10 to 1 at the Bath races that day. Post Office engineers reported this to the police on Friday night.
The engineers proved after tests lasting all day that a man with an acetylene lamp burned through a wire 18 feet above the ground half an hour before the first race began. At that time bookmakers throughout Britain were flooded with bets for Francasal, which had never won a race in its life.
Its price would have dropped to evens if x the off-course bookmakers could have got in touch with bookmakers on the course to lay off some of their liabilities. The gang is known to have used a van painted green—the colour of Post Office trucks^—with men dressed in blue overalls and peaked caps to give the impression that they were engineers.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27096, 20 July 1953, Page 9
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187BETTING TRICK IN BRITAIN Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27096, 20 July 1953, Page 9
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