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CHAPTER XIV 



Touts, horse-watchers, ' training reporters ' — A highly respectable 

 vocation — The tout made amusing — Another side to the question — 

 Porter's protest in 'Bell's Life' — A stable-boy tampered with — 'A 

 backer of horses' retained for the defence — The tipsters of the 

 circulars the first employers of training reporters — Burlesque re- 

 ports from training quarters — A specimen — The cost of thrashing 

 a tout — ' Necessary evils ' — The serious side of the question. 



1 On the subject of touts, horse-watchers, training 

 reporters, or whatever they may be called — although 

 touts, as they have been from the beginning, they 

 will remain to the end — my views may be guessed. 

 The trainer's opinion of the tout is similar to the 

 gamekeepers opinion of the poacher, and it can 

 never alter, let the methods of the spy or the 

 description of him and his work change as it may. 

 " A rose by any other name" (read contrariwise), 

 and so forth. A tout is a tout. Master tout, who 

 employs a staff of men, and who may one day, after 

 passing through the Parish Council and the County 

 Council, sit in Parliament and represent his precious 

 fraternity, is just the same to me as the meanest 

 member of his gang. In the old " Sporting Maga- 

 zine," hunting the tout is occasionally treated as a 

 sort of field sport, and once, if I recollect aright, an 



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