MODERN BETTING ILLUSTRATED, ETC. 191 



The great coursing meetings which take place 

 in the season when racing is pretty much at a 

 standstill also give rise to a vast amount of 

 betting, of which very little is known, because 

 it is not published from day to day. 



The enormous extent to which betting on 

 horse-racing goes on all the year round is known 

 to those only who make the matter a special 

 study. It has been computed by persons who 

 should know that not less than five thousand 

 bookmakers are daily engaged throughout the 

 United Kingdom in laying the odds against 

 horses to stakes ranging from sixpence to perhaps, 

 on some occasions, as much as five hundred or 

 even a thousand pounds. Taking it, for illus- 

 trative purposes, that each layer of the odds 

 deals only with a hundred customers, it becomes 

 obvious that there must be at least five hundred 

 thousand persons engaged in betting. The exact 

 number, however, could it be ascertained, would 

 doubtless prove much in excess of these figures. 

 Were it said that at present there are over a 

 million persons who take an interest in horse- 

 racing or in some of the other sports and 

 pastimes of the period to the extent of backing 

 their opinions by a bet, it would not probably be 

 an exaggeration. 



In one Scottish city there is, it has been 

 calculated, a hundred bookmakers at work every 

 day on the streets or in clubs or offices, doing 

 business with all comers at market rates, and 

 to stakes varying in amount from shillings and 

 half-crowns to "tenners and ponies" (^25). As 

 that city contains a population of over half a 

 million individuals, it affords data for calculating 



