Another gentleman, blessed with an amount of coolness and candour that should insure him a competency if every horse were swept off the face of the earth to-morrow, publishes the following; and the reader will please bear in mind that these various advertisements are clipped out of the sporting papers, and copied to the letter:
“Take Notice!!—I never advertise unless I am confident of success. I have now a real good thing forDerby at 100 to 1; sure to get a place, for which 25 to 1 can be obtained.—Enclose 1s.stamps and stamped addressed envelope, and secure this moral.—Remember Perry Down.—Address, H— Post-office, Reading.”
“Take Notice!!—I never advertise unless I am confident of success. I have now a real good thing forDerby at 100 to 1; sure to get a place, for which 25 to 1 can be obtained.—Enclose 1s.stamps and stamped addressed envelope, and secure this moral.—Remember Perry Down.—Address, H— Post-office, Reading.”
It may be remarked, that everything that is highly promising becomes, in the slang of the advertising tipster, a “moral;” but there are two dictionary definitions of the term—one affecting its relation to good or bad human life, and the other which is described as “the instruction of a fable.” It is possibly in this last sense that the tipster uses the word. “Send for my ‘moral’ on the Great Northern Handicap,” writes Mr. Wilson of Hull. “It is said that the golden ball flies past every man once in his lifetime!” cries “Quick-sight” of John-street, Brixton. “See it in my moral certainty for the Derby. See it, and fail not to grasp it. Fourteen stamps (uncut) will secure it.”
This should indeed be glad news for those unfortunates whose vision has hitherto been gladdened in the matter of golden balls only by seeing them hanging in triplet above the pawnbroker’s friendly door. Fancy being enabled to grasp the golden ball—the ball that is to stump out poverty, and send the bails of impecuniosity flying into space never to return, at the small cost of fourteen postage-stamps! They must be uncut, by the way, or their talismanic virtue will be lost. The worst of it is, that you are unable either to see it or grasp it until Quicksight sees and grasps your fourteen stamps; and if you should happen to miss the golden ball after all, it is doubtful if he would return you yourpoor one-and-twopence as some consolation in your disappointment. He would not do this, but he would be very happy to give you another chance. His stock of “golden balls” is very extensive. He has been supplying them, or rather the chance of grasping them, at fourteenpence each any time during this five years, and he is doubtless in a position to “keep the ball rolling” (the golden ball) until all his customers are supplied.
By the way, it should be mentioned, that the advertiser last quoted, as well as several others here instanced, terminate their appeals by begging the public to beware of welshers!
Does the reader know what is a “welsher”—the creature against whose malpractices the sporting public are so emphatically warned? Probably he does not. It is still more unlikely that he ever witnessed a “welsher” hunt; and as I there have the advantage of him, it may not be out of place here to enlighten him on both points. A “welsher” is a person who contracts a sporting debt without a reasonable prospect of paying it. There is no legal remedy against such a defaulter. Although the law to a large extent countenances the practice of betting, and will even go the length of lending the assistance of its police towards keeping such order that a multitude may indulge in its gambling propensities comfortably, it will not recognise as a just debt money owing between two wagerers. It is merely “a debt of honour,” and the law has no machinery that will apply thereto. The consequence is, that amongst the betting fraternity, when a man shows himself dishonourable,he is punished by the mob that at the time of the discovery of his defalcation may happen to surround him; and with a degree of severity according to the vindictiveness and brutality of the said mob. On the occasion of my witnessing a “welsher hunt,” I was present at the races that in the autumn of 1868 were held in Alexandra-park at Muswell-hill. As the race for the Grand Prize was decided, looking down from the gallery of the stand, I observed a sudden commotion amongst the perspiring, bawling, leather-lunged gentry, who seek whom they may devour, in the betting-ring below, and presently there arose the magical cry of “Welsher!” I have heard the sudden cry of “Fire!” raised in the night, and watched its thrilling, rousing effect on the population; but that was as nothing compared with it. Instantly, and as though moved by one deadly hate and thirst for vengeance, a rush was made towards a man in a black wide-awake cap, and with the regular betting-man’s pouch slung at his side, and who was hurrying towards the gate of the enclosure. “Welsher! welsher!” cried the furious mob of the ring, making at the poor wretch; and in an instant a dozen fists were directed at his head and face, and he was struck down; but he was a biggish man and strong, and he was quickly on his legs, to be again struck down and kicked and stamped on. He was up again, however, without his hat, and with his face a hideous patch of crimson, and hustled towards the gate, plunging like a madman to escape the fury of his pursuers; but the policeman blocked the way, and they caught him again, and somepunched at his face, while others tore off his clothes. One ruffian—I cannot otherwise describe him—plucked at the poor devil’s shirt at the breast, and tore away a tattered handful of it, which he flung over to the great yelling crowd now assembled without the rails; another tore away his coat-sleeves, and tossed them aloft; and in the same way he lost his waistcoat and one of his boots. It seemed as though, if they detained him another moment, the man must be murdered, and so the policeman made way for him to escape.
From the frying-pan into the fire. “Welsher! welsher!” The air rang with the hateful word, and, rushing from the gate, he was at once snatched at by the foremost men of the mouthing, yelling mob outside, who flung him down and punched and beat him. Fighting for his life, he struggled and broke away, and ran; but a betting-man flung his tall stool at him, and brought him to earth again for the twentieth time, and again the punching and kicking process was resumed. How he escaped from these was a miracle, but escape he did; and with the desperation of a rat pursued by dogs, dived into an empty hansom cab, and there lay crouched while fifty coward hands were stretched forward to drag him out, or, failing in that, to prog and poke at him with walking-sticks and umbrellas. At last, a mounted policeman spurred his horse forward and came to the rescue, keeping his steed before the place of refuge. Then the furious mob, that was not to be denied, turned on the policeman, and only his great courage and determinationsaved him from being unhorsed and ill-treated. Then other police came up, and the poor tattered wretch, ghastly, white, and streaming with blood, was hauled out and dragged away insensible, with his head hanging and his legs trailing in the dust, amid the howling and horrible execrations of five thousand Englishmen.
The next consideration was what to do with him. To convey him off the premises was impossible, since a space of nearly a quarter of a mile had to be traversed ere the outer gate could be reached. There was no “lock-up” at the new grand stand, as at Epsom and elsewhere. Nothing remained but to hustle him through a trap-door, and convey him by an underground route to a cellar, in which empty bottles were deposited. And grateful indeed must have been the stillness and the coolness of such a sanctuary after the fierce ordeal he had so recently undergone. Whether water was supplied him to wash his wounds, or if a doctor was sent for, is more than I can say. There he was allowed to remain till night, when he slunk home; and within a few days afterwards a local newspaper briefly announced that the “unfortunate man, who had so rashly roused the fury of the sporting fraternity at Alexandra races, was dead”!
To a close observer of the system that rules at all great horseracing meetings, nothing is so remarkable as the child-like reliance with which the general public intrusts its bettings to the keeping of the “professionals,” who there swarm in attendance. In the case of the bettors of the “ring” they may be tolerably safe,since it is to the interest of all that the atmosphere of that sacred enclosure, only to be gained at the cost of half-a-guinea or so, should be kept passably sweet. Besides, as was mentioned in the case of the unfortunate “welsher” at Alexandra races, the said enclosure is bounded by high railings; and the salutary effect of catching and killing a “welsher” is universally acknowledged. As regards the betting men themselves, it enables them to give vent to reckless ferocity that naturally waits on disappointed greed, while the public at large are impressed with the fact that strict principles of honour amongst gamblers really do prevail, whatever may have been said to the contrary. But at all the principal races the greatest number of bets, if not the largest amounts of money, are risked outside the magic circle. It is here that the huckster and small pedlar of the betting fraternity conjure with the holiday-making shoemaker or carpenter for his half-crown. For the thousandth time one cannot help expressing amazement that men who have to work so hard for their money—shrewd, hard-headed, sensible fellows as a rule—should part with it on so ludicrously flimsy a pretext. Here—all amongst the refreshment bustle, from which constantly streamed men hot from the beer and spirit counters—swarmed hundreds of these betting harpies; some in carts, but the majority of them perched on a stool, each with a bit of paper, on which some name was printed, stuck on his hat, and with a money-bag slung at his side, and a pencil and a handful of tickets. This was all. As often as not the name and address on thebetting man’s hat or money-bag was vaguely expressed as “S. Pipes, Nottingham,” or “John Brown, Oxford-street;” and who Pipes or Brown was not one man in a thousand had the least idea. Nor did they inquire, the silly gulls. It was enough for them they saw a man on a stool, ostensibly a “betting man,” bawling out at the top of his great, vulgar, slangy voice what odds he was prepared to lay on this, that, or t’other; and they flocked round—enticed by terms too good to be by any possibility true, if they only were cool enough to consider for a moment—and eagerly tendered to the rogue on the stool their crowns and half-crowns, receiving from the strange Mr. Pipes or Mr. Brown nothing in exchange but a paltry little ticket with a number on it. This, for the present, concluded the transaction; and off went the acceptor of the betting man’s odds to see the race on which the stake depended. In very many cases the exchange of the little ticket for the money concluded the transaction, not only for the present, but for all future; for, having plucked all the gulls that could be caught, nothing is easier than for Pipes to exchange hats with Brown and to shift their places; and the pretty pair may with impunity renounce all responsibility, and open a book on the next race on the programme. To be sure it is hard to find patience with silly people whowillwalk into a well; and when they follow the workings of their own free will, it is scarcely too much to say they are not to be pitied. But when a cheat or sharper is permitted standing room that he may pursue his common avocation,which is to cheat and plunder the unwary public, the matter assumes a slightly different complexion.
Of all manner of advertising betting gamblers, however, none are so pernicious, or work such lamentable evil against society, as those who, with devilish cunning, appeal to the young and inexperienced—the factory lad and the youth of the counting-house or the shop. Does anyone doubt if horseracing has attractions for those whose tender age renders it complimentary to style them “young men”? Let him on the day of any great race convince himself. Let him make a journey on the afternoon of “Derby-day,” for instance, to Fleet-street or the Strand, where the offices of the sporting newspapers are situated. It may not be generally known that the proprietors of theSunday Times,Bell’s Life, and other journals of a sporting tendency, in their zeal to outdo each other in presenting the earliest possible information to the public, are at the trouble and expense of securing the earliest possible telegram of the result of a horserace, and exhibiting it enlarged on a broad-sheet in their shop-windows. Let us take theSunday Times, for instance. The office of this most respectable of sporting newspapers is situated near the corner of Fleet-street, at Ludgate-hill; and wonderful is the spectacle there to be seen on the afternoon of the great equine contest on Epsom downs. On a small scale, and making allowance for the absence of the living provocatives of excitement, the scene is a reproduction of what at that moment, or shortly since, has taken place on the racecourse itself. Three o’clock isabout the time the great race is run at Epsom, and at that time the Fleet-street crowd begins to gather. It streams in from the north, from the east, from the south. At a glance it is evident that the members of it are not idly curious merely. It is not composed of ordinary pedestrians who happen to be coming that way. Butcher-lads, from the neighbouring great meat-market, come bareheaded and perspiring down Ludgate-hill, and at a pace that tells how exclusively their eager minds are set on racing: all in blue working-smocks, and with the grease and blood of their trade adhering to their naked arms, and to their hob-nailed boots, and to their hair. Hot and palpitating they reach the obelisk in the middle of the road, and there they take their stand, with their eyes steadfastly fixed on that at present blank and innocent window that shall presently tell them of their fate.
I mention the butcher-boys first, because, for some unknown reason, they undoubtedly are foremost in the rank of juvenile bettors. In the days when the Fleet-lane betting abomination as yet held out against the police authorities, and day after day a narrow alley behind the squalid houses there served as standing room for as many “professional” betting men, with their boards and money-pouches, as could crowd in a row, an observer standing at one end of the lane might count three blue frocks for one garment of any other colour. But though butcher-boys show conspicuously among the anxious Fleet-street rush on a Derby-day, they are not in a majority by a long way. To bet on the “Derby” isa mania that afflicts all trades; and streaming up Farringdon-street may he seen representatives of almost every craft that practises within the City’s limits. There is the inky printer’s-boy, hot from the “machine-room,” with his grimy face and his cap made of a ream wrapper; there is the jeweller’s apprentice, with his bibbed white apron, ruddy with the powder of rouge and borax; and the paper-stainer’s lad, with the variegated splashes of the pattern of his last “length” yet wet on his ragged breeches; and a hundred others, all hurrying pell-mell to the one spot, and, in nine cases out of ten, with the guilt of having “slipped out” visible on their streaming faces. Take their ages as they congregate in a crowd of five hundred and more (they are expected in such numbers that special policemen are provided to keep the roadway clear), and it will be found that more than half are under the age of eighteen. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that in the majority of cases a single lad represents a score or more employed in one “office” or factory. They cast lots who shall venture on the unlawful mission, and it has fallen on him. Again, and as before mentioned, theSunday Timesis but one of ten or a dozen sporting newspapers published between Ludgate-hill and St. Clement Danes; and in the vicinity of every office may be met a similar crowd. Let the reader bear these facts in mind, and he may arrive at some faint idea of the prevalence of the horse-gambling evil amongst the rising generation.
The significance of these various facts is plain to theadvertising tipster, and he shapes his baits accordingly. He never fails to mention, in apprising his youthful admirers, that, in exchange for the last “good thing,” postage-stamps will be taken. Well enough the cunning unscrupulous villain knows that in the commercial world postage-stamps are articles of very common use, and that at many establishments they are dealt out carelessly, and allowed to lie about in drawers and desks for the “common use.” There is temptation ready to hand! “Send fourteen stamps to Dodger, and receive in return thecertaintip as to who will win the Derby.” There are the stamps, and the ink, and the pen, and the envelope, and nothing remains but to apply them to the use Dodger suggests. It is not stealing, at least it does not seem like stealing, this tearing fourteen stamps from a sheet at which everybody in the office has access, and which will be replaced without question as soon as it is exhausted. It is at most only “cribbing.” What is the difference between writing a private note on the office paper and appropriating a few paltry stamps? It would be different if the fourteenpence was in hard money—a shilling and two penny-pieces. No young bookkeeper with any pretensions to honesty would be guilty of stealingmoneyfrom his master’s office—but a few stamps! Dodger knows this well enough, and every morning quite a bulky parcel of crummy-feeling letters are delivered at his residence in some back street in the Waterloo-road.
This is the way that Dodger angles for “flat-fish” of tender age:
“Great Results from small Efforts!—In order to meet the requirements of those of humble means, W. W—n, of Tavistock-street, is prepared to receive small sums for investment on the forthcoming great events. Sums as low as two-and-sixpence in stamps (uncut) may be sent to the above address, and they will be invested with due regard to our patron’s interest. Recollect that at the present time there are Real Good things in the market at 100 to 1, and that even so small a sum put on such will return the speculator twelve pounds ten shillings, less ten per cent commission, which is Mr. W.’s charge.”“Faint heart never won a fortune! It is on record that the most renowned Leviathan of the betting world began his career as third-hand in a butcher’s shop! He had a ‘fancy’ for a horse, and was so strongly impressed with the idea that it would win, that he begged and borrowed every farthing he could raise, and even pawned the coat off his back! His pluck and resolution was nobly rewarded. The horse he backed was at 70 to 1, and he found himself after the race the owner of nearly a thousand pounds! Bear this in mind. There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. Lose no time in forwarding fourteen stamps to Alpha, John-street, Nottingham; and wait the happy result.”
“Great Results from small Efforts!—In order to meet the requirements of those of humble means, W. W—n, of Tavistock-street, is prepared to receive small sums for investment on the forthcoming great events. Sums as low as two-and-sixpence in stamps (uncut) may be sent to the above address, and they will be invested with due regard to our patron’s interest. Recollect that at the present time there are Real Good things in the market at 100 to 1, and that even so small a sum put on such will return the speculator twelve pounds ten shillings, less ten per cent commission, which is Mr. W.’s charge.”
“Faint heart never won a fortune! It is on record that the most renowned Leviathan of the betting world began his career as third-hand in a butcher’s shop! He had a ‘fancy’ for a horse, and was so strongly impressed with the idea that it would win, that he begged and borrowed every farthing he could raise, and even pawned the coat off his back! His pluck and resolution was nobly rewarded. The horse he backed was at 70 to 1, and he found himself after the race the owner of nearly a thousand pounds! Bear this in mind. There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. Lose no time in forwarding fourteen stamps to Alpha, John-street, Nottingham; and wait the happy result.”
What is this but a plain and unmistakable intimation, on the part of the advertising blackguard, that his dupes shouldstick at nothingto raise money to bet on the “forthcoming great event”? Pawn, beg, borrow—anything, only don’t let the chance slip. Butcher-boys, think of the luck of your Leviathan craftsman, and at once take the coat off your back, or if you have not a garment good enough, your master’s coat out of the clothes-closet, and hasten to pawn it. Never fear for the happy result. Long before he can miss it, you will be able to redeem it, besides being in a position to snap your fingers at him, and, if you please, to start on your own “hook” as a bookmaker.
Another of these “youths’ guide to the turf” delicately points out that, if bettors will only place themselves in his hands, he will “pull them through, and land them high and dry,” certainly and surely, and with a handsome return for their investments. “No knowledge of racing matters is requisite on the part of the investor,” writes this quack; “indeed, as in all other business affairs of life, ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ Better trustentirelyto one who has made it the one study of his existence, and can read off the pedigree and doings of every horse that for the past ten years has run for money. Large investments are not recommended. Indeed, the beginner should in no case ‘put on’ more than a half-sovereign, and as low as half-a-crown will often be sufficient, and in the hands of a practised person like the advertiser be made to go as far as an injudiciously invested pound or more.”
It would be interesting to know in how many instances these vermin of the betting-field are successful, how many of them there are who live by bleeding thesimple and the infatuated, and what sort of living it is. Not a very luxurious one, it would seem, judging from the shady quarters of the town from which the “tipster” usually hails; but then we have to bear in mind the venerable maxim, “Light come, light go,” and its probable application to those harpies who hanker after “uncut” stamps and receive them in thousands. That very many of them find it a game worth pursuing, there can be no doubt, or they would not so constantly resort to the advertising columns of the newspapers. How much mischief they really do, one can never learn. The newspaper announcement is, of course, but a preliminary to further business: you send your stamps, and what you in most cases get in return is not the information for which you imagined you were bargaining, but a “card of terms” of the tipster’s method of doing business. There is nothing new or novel in this. It is an adaptation of the ancient dodge of the medical quack who advertises a “certain cure” for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” on receipt of seven postage-stamps; but all that you receive for your sevenpence is a printed recipe for the concoction of certain stuffs, “to be had only” of the advertiser.
And well would it be for the gullible public if the mischief done by the advertising fraternity of horse-racing quacks was confined to the “fourteen uncut stamps” they have such an insatiable hunger for. There can be no doubt, however, that this is but a mild and inoffensive branch of their nefarious profession. In almost every case they combine with the exerciseof their supernatural gift of prophecy the matter-of-fact business of the “commission agent,” and, if rumour whispers true, they make of it at times a business as infernal in its working as can well be imagined. They can, when occasion serves, be as “accommodating” as the loan-office swindler or the 60-per-cent bill-discounter, and a profit superior to that yielded by either of these avocations may be realised, and that with scarce any trouble at all. No capital is required, excepting a considerable stock of impudence and a fathomless fund of cold-blooded rascality.
Judging from the fact that the species of villany in question has never yet been exposed in a police-court, it is only fair to imagine that it is a modern invention; on that account I am the more anxious to record and make public an item of evidence bearing on the subject that, within the past year, came under my own observation.
It can be scarcely within the year, though, for it was at the time when an audacious betting gang “squatted” in the vicinity of Ludgate-hill, and, owing to some hitch in the law’s machinery, they could not easily be removed. First they swarmed in Bride-lane, Fleet-street. Being compelled to “move on,” they migrated to a most appropriate site, the waste land on which for centuries stood the infamous houses of Field-lane and West-street, and beneath which flowed the filthy Fleet-ditch. But even this was accounted ground too good to be desecrated by the foot of the gambling blackleg, and they were one fine morning bundled off it by a strong body of Citypolice. After this they made a desperate stand on the prison side of the way in Farringdon-street, and for some months there remained.
It was at this time that I made the acquaintance of the subject of the present little story. I had noticed him repeatedly, with his pale haggard face and his dull eyes, out of which nothing but weariness of life looked. He was a tall slim young fellow, and wore his patched and seedy clothes as though he had been used to better attire; and, despite the tell-tale shabbiness of his boots and his wretched tall black hat, he still clung to the respectable habit of wearing black kid-gloves, though it was necessary to shut his fists to hide the dilapidations at their finger-tips.
He was not remarkable amongst the betting blackguards he mingled with on account of the active share he took in the questionable business in which they were engaged; on the contrary, he seemed quite out of place with them, and though occasionally one would patronise him with a nod, it was evident that he was “nothing to them,” either as a comrade or a gull to be plucked. He appeared to be drawn towards them by a fascination he could not resist, but which he deplored and was ashamed of. It was customary in those times for the prosperous horse-betting gambler to affect the genteel person who could afford to keep a “man,” and to press into his service some poor ragged wretch glad to earn a sixpence by wearing his master’s “card of terms” round his neck for the inspection of any person inclined to do business. The tall shabby young fellow’schief occupation consisted in wandering restlessly from one of these betting-card bearers to another, evidently with a view to comparing “prices” and “odds” offered on this or that horse; but he never bet. I don’t believe that his pecuniary affairs would have permitted him, even though a bet as low as twopence-halfpenny might be laid.
I was always on the look-out for my miserable-looking young friend whenever I passed that way, and seldom failed to find him. He seemed to possess for me a fascination something like that which horse-betting possessed for him. One afternoon, observing him alone and looking even more miserable than I had yet seen him, as he slouched along the miry pavement towards Holborn, I found means to start a conversation with him. My object was to learn who and what he was, and whether he was really as miserable as he looked, and whether there was any help for him. I was prepared to exercise all the ingenuity at my command to compass this delicate project, but he saved me the trouble. As though he was glad of the chance of doing so, before we were half-way up Holborn-hill he turned the conversation exactly into the desired groove, and by the time the Tottenham-court-road was reached (he turned down there), I knew even more of his sad history than is here subjoined.
“What is the business pursuit that takes me amongst the betting-men? O no, sir, I’m not at all astonished that you should ask the question; I’ve asked it of myself so often, that it doesn’t come new to me. I pursueno business, sir. What businesscoulda wretched scarecrow like I am pursue? Say thatIam pursued, and you will be nearer the mark. Pursued by what I can never get away from or shake off: damn it!”
He uttered the concluding wicked word with such decisive and bitter emphasis, that I began to think that he had done with the subject; but he began again almost immediately.
“I wish to the Lord I had a business pursuit! If ever a fellow was tired of his life, I am. Well—yes, Iama young man; but it’s precious small consolation that that fact brings me. Hang it, no! All the longer to endure it. How long have I endured it? Ah, now you come to the point. For years, you think, I daresay. You look at me, and you think to yourself, ‘There goes a poor wretch who has been on the downhill road so long that it’s time that he came to the end of it, or made an end to it.’ There you are mistaken. Eighteen months ago I was well dressed and prosperous. I was second clerk to —, the provision merchants, in St. Mary Axe, on a salary of a hundred and forty pounds—rising twenty each year. Now look at me!
“You need not ask me how it came about. You say that you have seen me often in Farringdon-street with the betting-men, so you can give a good guess as to how I came to ruin, I’ll be bound. Yes, sir, it was horse-betting that did my business. No, I did not walk to ruin with my eyes open, and because I liked the road. I was trapped into it, sir, as I’ll be boundscores and scores of young fellows have been. I never had a passion for betting. I declare that, till within the last two years, I never made a bet in my life. The beginning of it was, that, for the fun of the thing, I wagered ten shillings with a fellow-clerk about the Derby that was just about to come off. I never took any interest in horseracing before; but when I had made that bet I was curious to look over the sporting news, and to note the odds against the favourite. One unlucky day I was fool enough to answer the advertisement of a professional tipster. He keeps the game going still, curse him! You may read his name in the papers this morning. If I wasn’t such an infernal coward, you know, I should kill that man. If I hadn’t the money to buy a pistol, I ought to steal one, and shoot the thief. But, what do you think? I met him on Monday, and he chaffed me about my boots. It was raining at the time. ‘I wish I had a pair of waterproofs like yours, Bobby. You’ll never take cold while they let all the water out at the heel they take in at the toe!’ Fancy me standingthatafter the way he had served me! Fancy this too—me borrowing a shilling of him, and saying ‘Thank you, sir,’ for it! Why, you know, I ought to be pumped on for doing it!
“Yes, I wrote to ‘Robert B—y, Esq., of Leicester,’ and sent the half-crown’s worth of stamps asked for. It doesn’t matter what I got in return. Anyhow, it was something that set my mind on betting, and I wrote again and again. At first his replies were of a distant and business sort; but in a month or so after I hadwritten to him to complain of being misguided by him, he wrote back a friendly note to say that he wasn’t at all surprised to hear of my little failures—novices always did fail. They absurdly attempt what they did not understand. ‘Just to show you the difference,’ said he, ‘just give me a commission to invest a pound for you on the Ascot Cup. All that I charge is seven and a half per cent on winnings. Try it just for once; a pound won’t break you, and it may open your eyes to the way that fortunes are made.’ I ought to have known then, that either he, or somebody in London he had set on, had been making inquiries about me, for the other notes were sent to where mine were directed from—my private lodgings—but this one came to me at the warehouse.
“Well, I sent the pound, and within a week received a post-office order for four pounds eight as the result of its investment. The same week I bet again—two pounds this time—and won one pound fifteen. That was over six pounds between Monday and Saturday. ‘Thisisthe way that fortunes are made,’ I laughed to myself, like a fool.
“Well, he kept me going, I don’t exactly recollect how, between Ascot and Goodwood, which is about seven weeks, not more. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but, on the whole, I was in pocket. I was such a fool at last, that I was always for betting more than he advised. I’ve got his letters at home now, in which he says, ‘Pray don’t be rash; take my advice, and bear in mind that great risks mean great losses, as well as greatgains, at times.’ Quite fatherly, you know! The infernal scoundrel!
“Well, one day there came a telegram to the office for me. I was just in from my dinner. It was from B—y. ‘Now you may bag a hundred pounds at a shot,’ said he. ‘The odds are short, but the resultcertain. Never mind the money just now. You are a gentleman, and I will trust you. You know that my motto has all along been ‘Caution.’ Now it is ‘Go in and win.’ It issure. Send me a word immediately, or it may be too late; and, if you are wise, put a ‘lump’ on it.’
“That was the infernal document—the death-warrant of all my good prospects. It was the rascal’s candour that deceived me. He had all along said, ‘Be cautious, don’t be impatient to launch out;’ and now this patient careful villain saw his chance, and advised, ‘Go in and win.’ I was quite in a maze at the prospect of bagging a hundred pounds. To win that sum the odds were so short on the horse he mentioned, that fifty pounds had to be risked. But he said that there wasnorisk, and I believed him. I sent him back a telegram at once to execute the commission.
“The horse lost. I knew it next morning before I was up, for I had sent for the newspaper; and while I was in the midst of my fright, up comes my landlady to say that a gentleman of the name of B—y wished to see me.
“I had never seen him before, and he seemed an easy fellow enough. He was in a terrible way—chiefly on my account—though the Lord only knew how muchhehad lost over the ‘sell.’ He had come up by express purely to relieve my anxiety, knowing how ‘funky’ young gentlemen sometimes were over such trifles. Although he had really paid the fifty in hard gold out of his pocket, he was in no hurry for it. He would take my bill at two months. It would be all right, no doubt. He had conceived a liking for me, merely from my straightforward way of writing. Now that he had had the pleasure of seeing me, he shouldn’t trouble himself a fig if the fifty that I owed him was five hundred.
“I declare to you that I knew so little about bills, that I didn’t know how to draw one out; but I was mighty glad to be shown the way and to give it him, and thank him over and over again for his kindness. That was the beginning of my going to the devil. If I hadn’t been a fool, I might have saved myself even then, for I had friends who would have lent or given me twice fifty pounds if I had asked them for it. But Iwasa fool. In the course of a day or two I got a note from B—y, reminding me that the way out of the difficulty was by the same path as I had got into one, and that a little judicious ‘backing’ would set me right before even my bill fell due. And I was fool enough to walk into the snare. I wouldn’t borrow to pay the fifty pounds, but I borrowed left and right, of my mother, of my brothers, on all manner of lying pretences, to follow the ‘advice’ B—y was constantly sending me. When I came to the end of their forbearance, I did more than borrow; but that we won’t speak of. Infive months from the beginning, I was without a relative who would own me or speak to me, and without an employer—cracked up, ruined. And there’s B—y, as I said before, with his white hat cocked on one side of his head, and his gold toothpick, chaffing me about my old boots. What do I do for a living? Well, I’ve told you such a precious lot, I may as well tell you that too. Where I lodge it’s a ‘leaving-shop,’ and the old woman that keeps it can’t read or write, and I keep her ‘book’ for her. That’s how I get a bit of breakfast and supper and a bed to lie on.”
[Since the above was written, the police, under the energetic guidance of their new chief, have been making vigorous and successful warfare against public gamblers and gambling agents. The “spec” dodge has been annihilated, “betting-shops” have been entered and routed, and there is even fair promise that the worst feature of the bad business, that which takes refuge behind the specious cloak of the “commission-agent,” may be put down. That it may be so, should be the earnest wish of all right-thinking men, who would break down this barrier of modern and monstrous growth, that blocks the advancement of social purity, and causes perhaps more ruin and irreparable dismay than any other two of the Curses herein treated of.]
Parochial Statistics—The Public hold the Purse-strings—Cannot the Agencies actually at work be made to yield greater results?—The Need of fair Rating—The heart and core of the Poor-law Difficulty—My foremost thought when I was a“Casual”—Who are most liable to slip?—“Crank-work”—The Utility of Labour-yards—Scales of Relief—What comes of breaking-up a Home.
Thefollowing is a return of the number of paupers (exclusive of lunatics in asylums and vagrants) on the last day of the fifth week of April 1869, and total of corresponding week in 1868:
Unions and single Parishes (the latter marked *).
Paupers.
Corresponding Total in 1868.
In-door. Adults and Children.
Out-door.
Total 5th week Apr. 1869.
Adults.
Children under 16.
West District:
* Kensington
809
1,379
1,545
3,733
2,874
Fulham
364
988
696
2,048
1,537
* Paddington
460
1,004
660
2,124
1,846
* Chelsea
702
896
744
2,342
2,272
* St. George, Hanover-square
753
852
642
2,247
2,127
* St. Margaret and St. John
1,131
1,791
1,313
4,285
5,742
Westminster
1,101
749
558
2,408
1,874
Total of West Dist.
5,320
7,659
6,158
19,137
18,272
North District:
* St. Marylebone
2,221
2,587
1,374
6,182
5,902
* Hampstead
143
126
57
326
347
* St. Pancras
2,141
3,915
2,847
8,903
8,356
* Islington
909
1,996
1,590
4,495
4,792
Hackney
695
2,909
2,952
6,556
5,385
Total of North Dist.
6,109
11,533
8,820
26,462
24,782
Central District:
*St. Giles and St. George, Bloomsbury
869
587
538
1,994
2,246
Strand
1,054
647
387
2,088
3,069
Holborn
554
947
781
2 282
2,724
Clerkenwell
713
999
642
2,354
2,863
* St. Luke
965
1,245
1,045
3,255
3,165
East London
838
1,038
906
2,782
2,813
West London
598
701
542
1,841
1,965
City of London
1,034
1,191
632
2,857
3,019
Total of Central D.
6,625
7,355
5,473
19,453
21,864
East District:
* Shoreditch
1,440
1,966
1,770
5,176
5,457
* Bethnal Green
1,510
1,265
1,389
4,164
5,057
Whitechapel
1,192
1,234
1,700
4,126
4,315
* St. George-in-the-E.
1,192
1,585
1,565
4,342
3,967
Stepney
1,072
1,600
1,533
4,205
4,650
* Mile End Old Town
547
1,228
1,055
2,830
2,705
Poplar
1,014
2,807
2,793
6,614
9,169
Total of East Dist.
7,967
11,685
11,805
31,457
35,320
South District:
St. Saviour, Southwk.
537
678
678
1,893
2,000
St. Olave, Southwark
478
393
464
1,335
1,349
* Bermondsey
712
554
752
2,018
1,860
* St. George, Southwk.
660
1,260
1,646
3,566
4,120
* Newington
891
1,450
1,330
3,671
3,676
* Lambeth
1,503
2,777
3,401
7,681
8,369
Wandsworth & Clapham
887
1,678
1,439
4,004
3,876
* Camberwell
865
1,537
1,492
3,894
3,360
* Rotherhithe
288
638
518
1,444
1,338
Greenwich
1,447
2,799
2,314
6,560
5,933
Woolwich
—
2,506
2,173
4,679
3,110
Lewisham
320
595
394
1,309
1,253
Total of South Dist.
8,588
16,865
16,601
42,054
40,244
Total of the Metropolis
34,609
55,097
48,857
138,563
140,482