TOUTS AND TIPSTERS. 129 



which he described had walked, being quite Lame, from 

 one box to another: ' It had two white heels,' said the 

 painter. That bit of information was worth a good 

 sum of money to the tout. 



An anecdote was printed some years ago detailing 

 how a warder in one of the big prisons, who had under 

 his charge the 'ne'er-do-well' son of a trainer, spent 

 his holiday near Newmarket with friends of the con- 

 vict, who by way of getting him favoured let the 

 official into two or three good things, by which he 

 made a sum of money sufficient to buy the goodwill 

 of a public-house which had for a long time been the 

 object of his ambition, as he had become heartily tired 

 of prison life. A bolder game was played by a tout 

 who, obtaining the use of a constable's uniform, told a 

 trainer that he had come down from London to tell 

 him that two noted characters had left for Newmarket 

 on some evil mission. The supposed constable, who 

 had come from Berkshire, was hospitably entertained 

 and rewarded, but what was of greater importance to 

 him, he learned a stable secret that he could not other- 

 wise have penetrated. It was a clever dodge success- 

 fully executed. 



The expense incurred by the newspapers of the 

 period in the purveying of tips and racing intelligence 

 runs undoubtedly in the course of the year into a 

 large sum of money. Every daily newspaper of any 

 consequence keeps a ' tipster,' or racing commentator, 

 his duty being to give once a week a good long review 

 of tlie past week's racing, and also to take a prophetic 

 glance at the forthcoming meetings. The cost of the 



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