"TOTE" BETTING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 50, 28 February 1945, Page 7

"TOTE" BETTING

THE LAW AND "AGENf"

P-A. NAPIER, This Day. Arising out of two betting transactions, each for £3000, at the November Meeting of the Napier Park Racing Club, Charles Slater, merchant, of Hastings, and Charles Williams,- retired, of Palmerston North, were charged with a.breach of the Gaming Act. Each was convicted and discharged by Mr. J. Miller at Hastings yesterday. After mentioning that his' only course was to treat the defendants as two members of the ordinary public, the Magistrate said: "The defendants appear to me as offenders prosecuted for the first time for 50. years as agent and employer simpliciter under an archaic and apparently purposely forgotten law."

A plea of not guilty was entered on behalf of Williams, who was charged with, at Napier on November 4 unlawfully employing Charles Slater to act for him -as agent in investing £3000 on the totalisator at the Napier Park races.

At a previous hearing in Napier Slater had pleaded guilty of unlawfully acting as agent for Williams arid penalty was deferred until yesterday. Mr. Miller held that there seemed to be no valid excuse for retaining section 53 of the Gaming Act under which the defendants were charged. It had misfired in its primary object and it had been the means of a large number of respectable racegoers unwittingly breaking the law. "It-must appear illogical to them that betting on the totalisator is legal, but, in doing this by agent, a seemingly innocuous method, it is deemed illegal," he said.