Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS' GAZETTE. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Thursday, June 10, 1897. CASH BETTING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VII, Issue 359, 10 June 1897, Page 4

Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS' GAZETTE. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Thursday, June 10, 1897. CASH BETTING.

It is evident from the fact that a policeofficer has been recently engaged in taking down the names of bookmakers engaged in betting on the Ellerrslie racecourse that in Auckland there are faddists who want to be in the fashion by joining in a crusade against cash betting, but before the authorities take a decided step it would be well to gravely consider the , question if it is the will or the wish of the people to stamp out a system that has so long prevailed. The decision of the English judges that a race-course is a place in which cash betting is prohibited by the Betting Houses Suppression Act has evidently caused more stir in New South Wales than in England. In the Mother Country only a few bookmakers have been convicted, and only small fines followed, it evidently being the opinion of the bench and the police that these prosecutions were against the wish and will of the people, and that the Act which had been raked up by the anti-gamblers had been framed and used in the first years of its existence as an instrument for suppressing the low and undesirable list houses that had sprung into existence in London. In Sydney, however, the police have not been so moderate in their actions as those of England, and the anti-gambling hysteria of Sydney promises to bring about the defeat of the fanatics who have aroused the hubbub by setting in motion a law that was never intended to apply to bookmakers. In England the prosecutions appear to have been forced on by the society of anti-gambling fanatics, who a few years ago made fools of themselves and the police, who they had converted into tools for the occasion, by making a raid on one of the leading and most respectable clubs in the big city of London. Their vindictive and intolerant spirit had probably caused them to hope that members of the club would be caught with cards or dice in their hands so that they might have the pleasnre of hounding down any who happened to come within their clutches, but their charitable hopes were crushed,

the raid ending in a fiasco. The police of course had to bear their share of the odium that followed, and probably to that fact is attributable their disinclination to become the tools of an intolerant and narrow-minded section of the community. In Sydney, however, the police are carrying on the crusade against bookmakers and cash betting with extraordinary zeal, and in their work they appear to be backed up by the bench, the members of which threaten to visit the sin of cash betting with heavy fines, and if fines will not do imprisonment will follow. This new born zeal on the part of bench and “ bobby” may be attributable to the pricking of conscience engendered by a sense of a gross neglect of duty in the past, a neglect which resulted in the establishment, in almost every street in Sydney, of cheap and dishonest tote shops, just the sort of places to which the Betting Houses Suppression Act was intended to apply when it was framed. The city was disgraced by the existence of these places, and for a long time they enjoyed such an immunity from prosecution and punishment that the public began to ba suspicious, and these suspicions if formulated in words would not flatter either the bench or the police. These shops were as much the enemies of the respectable bookmaker as the general community, and now that many of them have been closed in consequence of the force of public opinion we find a new born zeal directed against the bookmakers who were tha actual sufferers during the tolerated tote shop time, and are to be mada the sufferers again, and that, too, by the aid of a law which is grossly anomalous, because while it makes it an offence to indulge in cash betting, wagering on the “nod” or on the credit system may be indulged in to further orders. In this respect the resuscitated law of the anti gamblers is, to quote the words of Mr Bumble, “ a hass,” because no one who has an ounce of experience on the Turf will attempt to argue that the credit system of betting is better or more healthy in tone than cash betting.’ It is certainly the credit system that makes men plungers. After losing his cash the punter generally stops, but unfortunately the man betting on credit very frequently does not know when to stop, until he becomes hopelessly involved, and that is what the effect of the crusade against cash betting will have. If cash betting is illegal, then the amendment of the law should be demanded, such as has been done by Mr Levien in the New South Wales Assembly, where he has introduced a Bill to make race-course betting permissable under certain restrictions, and from present appearances there is every prospect of the Bill passing.