Betting on Racing.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 61, 1 November 1887, Page 2

Betting on Racing.

In a lecture given in Melbourne recently on “ Gambling and the Racecoursethe Rev. Mr Fitchett, 8.A., said that a horse race was as intrinsically innocent a thing as a cricket match, but, he continued; we Bland in the presence of a huge and organised vice, the vice of gambling, which like a monstrous parasite, thrusts its roots into otherwise innocent amusements. Racing in Cup week, the racing which in a few more days Will be on us like a deluge, is but a pretext for some of the most enormous gambling on the face of the earth ; gambling which grows every year bigger and madder, and more furious, until, as with the impact of Niagara, it sweeps away the entire community. The passionate excitement of the Clip—the fierce interest that stops the pulses bf 120,000 people—what is the inspiration ? It is this, that with every neat of the flying hoofs tens of thousands of pounds dance out of one set of pockets into another. The real etakes played for in the Cup are men's fortune aud character, men’s happiness and misery, men’s life and death. The champion bookmaker, Mr Joseph Thompson, to whom all other gamblers are but sprats and minnows, has just been working out a very curious sum for us. He estimates that over £20,000,000 s'erling changes hands throughout Australia during the year. The aggregate public revenue of all Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, only reaches £23,000,000; so here is a sum which would keep the whole machinery of Government in movement throughout Australia ; and it is flung yearly into the cesspit of this vice. If Mr Thompson's figures are correct, gambling and the racecourse represent a yearly expenditure of £6 per head for every man, woman and child, including the babies, throughout the colonies.