WOMAN AS TURF TIPSTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22099, 1 November 1933, Page 8

WOMAN AS TURF TIPSTER

EX-SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER f “NOTHING THAT IS WRONG.” I A woman racecourse tipster, who stated that she had been a Sunday school teacher for 24 years, pleaded not guilty to using insulting words and behaviour at Wimbledon, London, recently. The case was dismissed. , , The woman, Miss Florence Budge, of Kensington, told her story to a reporter. “I was once wealthy,” she said, ‘ but I have gradually lost my money in investments and was nearly at the end of my tether when I found that I could tip winners. , , “My method involves hard work. It took me 15 hours to work out the winner of the Ebor Handicap, and it often takes me 12 hours’ solid work, combining form and weights and measurements and millions of figures, to find the horse. I do not go entirely on form. I have a system of measurements. People ask me how I reconcile religion and horse racing. Why not? I have always been religious, and I do nothing that is wrong on the racecourse. I never say that I am giving certainties. Nobody can give certainties. If I have not absolute confidence in the horse I am tipping, I tell the customer so, and advise him only to put 2e or 3s on if he looks a poor man. “As we grow older we otten grow broader-minded. Twenty years ago I should have cast off anyone who went to race meetings. Now, I know what great and harmless enjoyment there can be in racegoing. It is temperance in all things that matters. “The men on the racecourse have learned to respect me. They know that J -will never let them use bad language in my hearing. Until recently, 1 was a teacher at a London Nonconformist bundav school. I still go to chapel. 11 A woman at chapel the other Sunday was shocked when she heard that I was a racegoer. I asked her if she was not in the position of the people who jeered at Christ for going with the publicans.