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New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IV, Issue 157, 27 July 1893, Page 3

The bookmakers registered by the Victoria Racing Club made a strange application the other day to the members of the committee of that body. A deputation from their ranks waited on the committee and asked that the annual fee paid by them should cover free admission to the course. As a new committee will be elected in the course of a few days when the annual meeting of the V.R.C. comes on, the present committee decided to leave the question to the judgment of the new committee. Considering the stiffness of the license fee that the registered bookmakers have to pay to the V.R.C., we do not think the request so very unreasonable as at the first blush it might appear to be. Considering this and the present bad times resulting in Melbourne, of which bad times the bookmakers have had to take their share, we should like to see the new committee of the V.R.C. accede to the request made them. But we are by no means sanguine of their doiug so.

When the deputation went before the V.R.C. committee, Mr W. H. McMillan and Mr S. Grimwood, who were the" principal speakers, represented that the U Australian Jockey Club charged a similar fee to that demanded by the V.R.C.— £25 —but gave holders of licenses free admission to the paddock. They also pointed out the very large extent to which the licensing system had increased the number of bookmakers. When registration was first introduced there were only some 80 on the list, but now there were fully double that number, so that vvero-... the concession granted and free admis-u sion given metallicians to the paddock.it would not cause any depreciation in the , receipts of the V.R.C. as compared with-

the earlier days of the system. As a matter of fact it was felt that the bookmakers could not afford to pay the fees exacted from them by the various racing clubs throughout Australia. The item of Z'zs possibly looked small, but the request was merely the commencement of an agitation for general reductions in this respect. They were beginning at the top of the tree, and would afterwards endeavour to induce proprietary clubs to make an allowance similar to that which they now sought from the V.R.C. It was also pointed out by the deputation that there was a very small amount of money taken by the bookmakers nowadays as compared with the better times, and the depression, which had induced the V.R.C. to decrease the amount to be given in added money at suburban meetings to £3OO, had likewise strongly affected them.