Betting and the Law A POLICE-COURT decision and a recommendation by
the Jockey Club are two events of the week which point to the necessity of overhauling the whole business of betting and the laws which govern it. The English . laws about betting are so grotesquely clumsy and illogical that they would probably be laughed out of existence in any other country. Englishmen, however, have a certain tenderness for anything that just works, even :though it be indefensible upon paper. They have no desire passionately to insist upon logic. The absurd laws which govern betting—or would it not be more true to say which look on while betting for the most part governs itself ?—might have continued for a long time to come had not the decision of the Government to tax betting made a clarification at last necessary. The introduction of the Totalisator alone, as recommended by the Jockey Club, will involve legislation. When legislation comes it will stretch Out many arms.
At the West London Police Court, on Friday, October 28th, the Anti-Gambling League stated cases against the Greyhound Racing Association for contra- vening the Act of 1853 and against a bookmaker who had been fished out of the White City at haphazard. The legal issue turned, as generally happens, upon the definition of a " place." The Act of 1853 prohibited the use of any " house, office, room or place " for ready- inciney betting. As everybody knows, the definition of a " place " has ever since been the butt of controversy and the subject of unending humour in the courts. The famous Kempton Park trial was carried to the House of Lords, and the Lords decided that if a bookmaker at a racecourse carried on. his betting with the help of a movable stand or some such contrivance he was not occupying a " place." Since then all the. authorities of racecourses have been extremely careful not to allot any fixed positions to bookmakers. The theory is that the bettor enters a racecourse as a private person and there meets a bookmaker who happens to be there also as a private person. Between them they happen to make bets ; but neither of them has entered a " place " for the transaction. All this is ghastly humbug, of course, and all that can be said for it is that the hocus- pocus has been respected because it was understood for what it was worth.
The technical fault of the managers of the White City Stadium was that—in the interests of order, as they say—they assigned " places " to the bookmakers. They set up posts and to these posts the bookmakers attached their boards, thus infringing the law. The Greyhound Racing Association was therefore fined £50 and 100 guineas costs, and the bookmaker, of whom it was indulgently said that he was a comparatively innocent person, was fined- 20s. The Anti-Gambling League certainly desired much more than this trifling decision. It really tried to charge the Greyhound Racing Asso- ciation with -illegality in allowing betting at all. This issue, however, was definitely ruled out by the magistrate. For the present, betting on greyhound races remains unchallenged, lint if the Anti-Gambling League thinks that it has any chance of success it will no doubt bring another case framed in 'such a way as to test the major issue: • is- suggested that, though betting at horse races has long passed for legal, betting on greyhounds is essentially different. The greyhound is not ridden by a man, nor is it definitely trying to win a race. It is not even conscious that it is engaged in a race ; it is only pursuing a dummy hare so long as the hare remains within sight. All this sounds rather a shadowy argument bordering on the metaphysical. Does a horse know that it is racing ? We think it does, but we could not undertake to prove it in court. We can hardly suppose that betting at greyhound races will be prohibited as illegal while betting on horses is accepted as legal, or let us say; as not illegal.
Nevertheless the betting at greyhound races seems in some ways to be a greater social evil than the betting at other races. The present m riter spent an hour or two one evening at the White City, and his impression was that nothing really mattered except the betting.
The whole course was like the apparatus of petits chevaux in a Gargantuan vision or a nightmare. The vivid green ribbon of well-kept turf with the powerful electric lights directed on it was like the green baize of many other gambling tables.. As a spectacle for a very short time it was fascinating enough, but the races were very brief, the intervals were very long. There was no possibility of wandering through paddocks where one can admire the symmetry of the most beautiful animals in the world and develop some kind of personal interest in their achievements. In greyhound racing the animals are remote, the gambling is near. It is as though illegal ready-money betting in small sums had suddenly been transferred from " the streets " to licensed areas where (so far as we know at present) it has suddenly become legal.
Do these facts suggest that it is possible to prohibit betting at greyhound meetings ? We have merely set down the facts as we see them without for a moment thinking such a thing is possible—unless indeed betting at horse racing can also be prohibited. The moral seems to us to be that the taxation of betting ought to become a kind of sumptuary law. What cannot be suppressed ought to be taxed as heavily as is practicable in order to restrain it. Betting is one of the greatest of our public luxuries. So far the Government have made a mere beginning of taxation by taxing only credit- betting and race-course betting. They left ready-money " street " betting alone because they shrank from setting up licensed betting offices which are said to be the only conceivable means of bringing street-betting under control.
If the Totalisator should be adopted, as we feel sure it will be, a different complexion will be put upon the whole attitude of the State towards betting. The principle for which we have long contended will in fact be accepted—that it is wise to discourage by taxation what you cannot prevent, and that if taxation is the remedy, or partial remedy, it must be applied as scien- tifically as possible. Beyond all doubt the Totalisator is the most scientific means of taxing betting yet invented. It gives the true odds ; it does not cheat ; it can be made to. contribute to the support of racing ; it may' leave something over for charity ; it collects a revenue for the State with the smallest possible expenditure upon administration. So by all means let 'us have it.
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