THE BOOKMAKER.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 14245, 25 June 1910, Page 3

THE BOOKMAKER.

SEVERE CONDEMNATION BY A JUDGE. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Juno 25. Among the prisoners before the Supremo Court for sentence this morning wore George Bater and Sydney Saunders, charged with the theft of largo sums of money from their employers, Sharland and Co. and Tonsoh, Garliok and Co. Justice Chapman said Eater’s extremely heavy defalcations were tho result of tho wilful decision to enter upon a course of heavy betting with bookmakers. For a long time the totalisator had been familiar as a public gambling appliance. His own personal opinion was that it ought not to exist, but his opinion was by no moans shared by the bulk of the community, and the totalisator had tho merit of openness in its transactions, “but the law that I complain of,” continued the judge, “and 1 consider it my duty as judge, to openly complain of, is that which legalises the ( operation of a section who come very near to tho criminal class. Bookmakers may ho honourable men. I have boon assured that many bookmakers are honourable, but as a class •they arc treated by civilised communities as persons without lawful means of support. The New Zealand Parliament has seen fit to erect them into a legalised class and legitimate calling, I think that is one of the gravest mistakes the Legislature of tho Dominion has made.” His Honour urged that the sooner the whole subject was reconsidered the better in the interest of morality and honesty. He believed he was speaking in accord with the views held by every judge and magistrate of the country and police officers and others administering tho criminal laws, when ho declared that tho result of the law in question was the direct encouragement of the criminal class, making criminals of young men normally not criminal. Bater had misappropriated tho enormous sum of £3500 in fifteen months. In Saunders’ case the defalcations wore not nearly as great, but there was no ground for treating the offences differently. Sentences of four years’ hard labour were imposed on each prisoner.