BOOKMAKERS AND BOOKMAKING 193 



pays a little on account, more frequently pays 

 nothing at all, but goes racing, laying out his 

 ready money with the men to whom he is not in 

 debt. The worst punishment that can overtake 

 him is that (after a tedious process) he may be 

 warned off Newmarket Heath and all other 

 racecourses — but I know a good many who 

 disregard the warning, and are regularly found in 

 their old haunts. The Committee of the New- 

 market Rooms act very justly as a rule, and 

 certainly always with every desire to be fair ; but 

 their judgments seem to me — perhaps I am 

 prejudiced — to lean generally in the direction of 

 the backer. They are, however, useful as a 

 species of debt-collecting agency. I mean that if 

 a bookmaker pays a guinea and lodges a com- 

 plaint — " has a man up " — an official warning is 

 sent to the defaulter, and in most cases that 

 induces him to make some sort of effiart to get the 

 complaint withdrawn, the effi^rt, of course, usually 

 taking the shape of payment of, at any rate, a part 

 of his debt. 



Bookmakers usually start poor, and not seldom 

 remain so. Most of them — it is curious, by the 

 way, to what an extent the business, and there- 

 fore the aptitude for it, runs in families — start 

 betting outside the rings (when allowed) ; if 



o 



