GAMBLED ON DOGS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 122, 16 February 1935, Page 18

GAMBLED ON DOGS

Bank Cler k’s Downfall

Astounding details of a young bank I clerk’s spectacular plunging on dogracing were revealed in the High Court at Edinburgh lately. To make good an original deficiency of £3 he embezzled, in less than four months, £5500 of the bank’s money—every penny of which went, into the pockets of bookmakers. Now he is serving a sentence of three years’ penal servitude. Comment by the judge on the salary paid to a man who had to handle big sums of money every day was a feature of the ease. The man in the dock, William Goldie Bennett, aged 27. a cashier in one of the Edinburgh branches of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, was charged with embezzling £5500 between August 1 and November 28 of last year. The Scottish banks have an inflexible rule that if one of their employees is seen at a dog-race meeting he will be instantly dismissed. No explanation will be accepted. Bennett knew this and was clever enough not to go to any of the Edinburgh dog-racing tracks But each night he took a motor-car to Glasgow and became a “big-betting boy” at whatever track there was racing. After a couple of nights of heavy plunging Bennett was picked up by some bookmakers’ touts, and the hooks were laid out for him so cleverly that the whole of the money which he embezzled, with the excepton of the travelling expenses from Edinburgh to Glasgow, was netted by the bookmakers. The young man was surrounded by “friends” who gave him “inside information.” He wag “played up” in every possible way, and he might have plunged into deeper depredations if he had not been discovered by the bank inspectors. On occasions he was allowed to win five or six hundred pounds but in the end he was cleaned out. Bennett did not follow the usual route of the plunger by giving spectacular parties in restaurants after the racing, but returned quietly to his obscure home. After a day’s work in the bank he would abstract sometimes £2OO, sometimes £5OO, in order to go on with his wild folly.

The swift career ro downfall of Bennett recalls the case of Goudie, the Liverpool bank clerk, who, starting his betting in small sums, was caught by a gang of race “crooks” and ended by

betting wildly in thousands. Goudie was discovered through a slip being made in one of the ledgers. He died in prison.

Bennett was regarded as one of the bank’s most promising employees and counsel for the defence explained in court how his career of crime began. He made his first slip when he took £3 from the till to buy some extra comforts for his invalid mother, who is now dangerously ill. When he could not repay at the end of the week he took some more money and went dog-racing in the hope of restoring this little default. All through, counsel explained, there was no falsification of the books, and no tampering with the accounts of the bank’s customers.

"What salary had he?” asked Lord Aitchison, the Lord Justice Clerk.

Counsel: Two hundred and ten pounds a year. I do not wish to comment on the salary. Bennett, counsel continued, was sensible of the gravity of the offence he had committed. There was no more money passing through his hands than through the hands of many other cashiers. It was just this one slip It was tragic that for so small a sum he should stand in the dock The blame, counsel declared, rested with the bookmakers, who took from this man, who they must have known was employed in a bank, sume of £2OO a year.

The Lord Justice Clerk remarked that he did not see why a cashier in a position of responsibility should only be paid £2lO a year. “It is no excuse, but there it is,” he commented. “Unfortunately, I cannot take it into account” Continuing, counsel stated that all the money had gone into the pockets of bookmakers. This was one of the many instances that came before the Criminal courts of'the havoc that was caused in the community through betting. The Lord Justice Clerk, addressing Bennett, declared that he would very willingly have refrained from passing a sentence of penal servitude, but in the public interest it was not possible to do so. He would, however, give effect to what counsel had said by making the sentence the lowest term of penal servitude he could pronounce—three years —and he would allow the sentence to run from the date when Bennett’s irregularities began.