WHAT IS "A BOOK"?
'This question has cropped up in America, and produced a judicial decision. In the cases of Sol Stein and W. F. Hogaman, bookmakers, charged with violating the Missouri breeders' law, Judge Clark, of tho Court of Criminal Correction in St. Louis, on December 8, ruled that tho State failed to make a case by not proving that the bets were registered in a real book, with leaves and binding. The information pleaded that the bets wore made by means of a " book," and the court held that this was not sufficient. The State attempted to show that a " book" could be made without a, sheet of paper and. a cover, but the court said he could not take judicial cognisance of a cant expression, or gambler's phrase, and he would have to hold that the word "book" meant a book. If this is good law, Abe Moss is not a bookmaker, nor is Peter Grant — at least, they would not be bookmakers in America. I guess, however, that the term will stand good with the general public. It is, at any rate, as near to correctness as the term "jockey club." That always struck me as absurd, for at no time in the history of the turf has the racing been governed by jockeys — not nominally, that is to
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Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 2396, 1 February 1900, Page 40
Word Count
223WHAT IS "A BOOK"? Otago Witness, Issue 2396, 1 February 1900, Page 40
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