THE FATHERS OF BOOKMAKING 19 



marvellous trial ; and then came his inevitable proposal, 

 " I'll bet thee five pun ; I may as well have my ex- 

 penses." 



A scarcely less notable " bookie " of that day was Jem 

 Bland, whose origin, like that of Robinson, was "wrop 

 in mistry." He and his brother Joe, who made a fortune 

 of ;^3 5,000 by farming the turnpike gates, were, I believe, 

 originally post-boys, and then rose to be livery-stable 

 keepers in Wardour Street, Be this, however, as it may 

 Jem Bland was a well-known betting man as early as the 

 middle of the second decade of the last century. 



" His rough expressions," says the " Druid," such as 

 " never coomed a-nigh," and so on, as well as his long nose 

 and white flabby cheeks, made him a man of mark even 

 before he got enough, by laying all round, to set up a 

 mansion in Piccadilly. 



Bland was the noisiest and most blatant of the betting 

 men of his time. His strident voice could be heard above 

 any din — he was the Boanerges of the ring. He could 

 neither read nor write, though his second wife educated 

 him enough to sign his name to cheques with a great 

 sprawling scrawl, which was accepted as standing for 

 "j. Bland." Jem could never make a note of a bet; but 

 when he got home the list was read over to him, and not 

 Cocker himself or the calculating Charles Babbage could 

 have recounted more exactly what he had been doing at 

 the betting-post. The faithful helpmeet already alluded 

 to taught him a kind of hieroglyphic shorthand, in which 

 he took down bets in his later days, and when he got home 

 he and his wife between them puzzled out the cabalistic 

 symbols ; for, as my Yorkshire friend already quoted would 

 have put it, " 'e could soom in his 'ead." 



Some of Jem Bland's betting exploits have become 

 notorious. For example, it is still remembered how in the 

 long upper room of the Salutation at Doncaster (which 

 was the betting mart until 1826), on the eve of the St 

 Leger of 1822, he delivered his portentous offer of "a 

 hundred to your walking-stick against Theodore," and how 

 Mr Wyville accepted the wager. As everyone knows, the 

 despised Theodore, against whom ^^500 to £s ^^^ been 



