cheers DA lol   

are yours ears still hurting from the James Blunt "experience" , Mopey?

Think his singing has replaced waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay

I cannot deny that reality, Mopey

one mans' demise is now imminent   

strange bedfellows 

lol ... ruination ... is now imminent 

resolved to go to the races the very next Saturday. 

Why did I so resolve?  Was greed the cause? Or my limited finances? Or the influence of my new-found friends? Or an unconscious revolt against my environment? To this day I cannot be sure.

To tell Julia was out of the question. I had never deceived her before about anything, but now I determined to do so. To deceive her was quite simple, really. My week-end routine was time honoured. On Saturday, I would arrive home at about 12.45, have lunch and small talk with Julia, and help her with the dishes. Then I’d change into old clothes, cut the lawns back and front, and potter about the garden. I neither liked nor disliked gardening; it was an established part of my routine, that was all. Our garden was large and needed a lot of attention. On Saturday nights we went to the pictures at the local theatre, whether the programme appealed to us or not. On Sundays we went to church. We found time to go for a drive in the afternoon if Julia was in the humour. I quite enjoyed driving; I used the car only at week-ends, being unable to afford to drive it to work. We were paying heavy instalments on the house and car and “keeping up with the Joneses”. My father had left me a little money but the deposit on the house and the car and our mode of living soon ate it up. Julia had nothing. Her father had lost heavily during the depression years and had only sufficient money at the time of his death to leave Julia’s mother a house and a small annuity which had decreased in value with inflation.

If we didn’t go for a Sunday drive, I played golf with neighbours, a lawyer and an architect. Golf is not a game I much enjoy but it was the done thing to play golf so I played it.

On a few occasions since our marriage, I had worked back at the bank on a Saturday afternoon so, when I told Julia I must do so again, she raised no protest.

On the Friday afternoon, Jim came into the bank to draw a thousand pounds. At the hotel, I asked him if I could accompany him to the races next day. He seemed to hesitate as though concerned about my interest in gambling, but finally agreed.

Next morning for the first time in my life, but by no means for the last, I experienced the joyous expectancy of the gambler. As I have recorded earlier, in relation to Jim, nothing can compare with it. I awoke on the Saturday morning with a pleasant sensation in the stomach and a tingle in the nerves of my fingers and toes. The all-consuming expectancy, like that of a child on the eve of Christmas, gripped me all morning at work, destroying my concentration.

The lagging clock on the wall moved to closing time but bank employees do not finish work when the doors close – there was still much to be done. At last, I was away and running towards the hotel. The fact that I ran was a further symptom of my revolt. Previously, my time-table was so organized that I moved always calmly, and at a steady gait. Now I was running excitedly, as if fleeing from my past. I found Jim Roberts and the others in the bar waiting impatiently.

“We were going to give you another five minutes, Paul,” Jim said. “We don’t want to keep the bookmakers waiting. They’re all down to their last hundred thousand and need our money to feed their starving children.”

Soon we were getting into a sleek black hire car outside the hotel. There were six of us. The driver was, I learnt, Eric Johnson; he treated his Saturday visit to the races as a mixture of business and pleasure. Johnson looked like a detective: big, ruggedly handsome, but colourless, taciturn and of shallow mentality. He owned the vehicle and plied with it as a hire car. Jim Roberts was his best customer. Johnson drove him almost everywhere he went. These Saturday trips to the races were most profitable; Eric Johnson charged us each one pound for the afternoon. Jim seemed to think this reasonable and, as often as not, paid for everyone. “Cheaper than owning a car,” he would say. Johnson was not a gambler by instinct or inclination; but he bet with his fares, cautiously but unskilfully. Not the kind of man who gets into trouble through gambling……….

Jim Roberts sat next to Johnson, dressed in neat sports clothes and bow tie, hatless as usual. I sat next to Jim, as I was to do often as the months passed. The others in the party varied from Saturday to Saturday; on this particular day, in the back seat sat three men.

Harry Walton, Jim’s life-long friend, was behind the driver. Sandy- haired and freckled, he wore a brown suit, slightly frayed at the cuffs. Still a single man and employed now in the building trade, Walton lived for horse-racing and his friendship with Jim Roberts.

Next to Harry Walton was an elderly man known for some unaccountable reason as Dapper Dan. The word to describe his dress would have been the reverse of dapper; an old coat and trousers, unpressed as if slept in, a none-too-clean tartan print shirt; a greasy old tie; and, incongruously, a new hat. The hat, I was told later, had been bought by Jim Roberts, who often gave Dan a present in money or kind after a winning day. Old Dan worked in the stables of a well-known horse- trainer. He had been apprenticed to a Caulfield trainer as a lad. Becoming too heavy for riding, he stayed in the game, working in this stable and that. Jim Roberts used to say to him: “You’re getting to look more like a bloody horse every day, Dan,” and old Dan would chuckle, shaking his shoulders up and down. Dan spent as much time ferreting for tips as he did tending the horses. He came to the hotel each Saturday morning with a long list of tips, sometimes as many as three in the same race.  Jim would listen to his information, then sort the grain from the chaff. He had twice given Dan the price of a suit of clothes, but the old chap hadn’t got around to buying one: he didn’t like “dressing up flash”, and he needed every penny he could get for gambling, at which he lost in the long run. “A man gets too many bloody tips,” he told me one day.

The other occupant of the car was a man named Tom Sparks, a semi-professional punter. Sparks was a typical Australian battler, tall and angular, a sardonic wit, a kindly cynic who favoured the under-dog, but had, as Gerald Roberts put it, “emancipated himself”. Sometimes, when Gerald Roberts talked politics, Sparks would say: “I’ll expropriate the capitalists, Gerry; starting with the book-makers!” Tom Sparks had tried every way known to man of making a “more or less honest quid”, from gold prospecting to inventing gadgets. Now, he eked out a living punting horses and, during a bad trot, “turned over a quid” as a salesman. He was in constant conflict with his wife over gambling, but she was slowly becoming resigned to her fate.

Presently, Tom Sparks said: “We’ll have a job to catch the first.”

“What’s the right time?”

“Almost a quarter- past,” I replied.

“You won’t have that watch long, Paul,” Jim jested. “You rarely see a punter with a watch. Can’t afford one. They need the money for betting and there’s plenty of clocks on the racecourse. Anyway, you can always ask a bookie the time – they’ve all got gold watches.”

Soon they fell to discussing horses and form, exchanging ideas and information which, at that time, I couldn’t understand.

Up St.Kilda Road sped the car in the bright sunshine, the Shrine of Remembrance in the distance ahead of us, framed by the avenue of trees and the cloudless sky. Soon the Shrine was behind us and we drove up Swanston Street.


“It’s bloody marvellous,” Harry Walton complained. “If you miss one set of lights you miss the lot.”
“Stop laughing,” Jim Roberts said. “My horoscope is good today. We’ll kill ‘em.” He often joked about astrology, trying to hide the superstitions he had about gambling.


Through the slums of North Melbourne and soon, by taxi drivers’ short cuts, we came out within sight of Flemington racecourse. I’d passed it in the train more than once. But now, swathed in sunlight, the crowds streaming into it from all points, the double- tiered stands flag-bedecked and the bookmakers’ umbrellas up, it assumed a new vital aspect. Life had been infused into it, adding new beauty to the green lawns, the picturesque gardens, the symmetrical sweep of the rails. Our car nosed its way slowly with the line of traffic, then swept clear down the long drive parallel with the Straight Six section of the track towards the Paddock and Hill entrances. My heart was singing – this was the life!




OH YEAH BABY, SOUNDS GOOD TO ME TOO

Yes TB, the sheer number of people, bookies, the rabbit warrens that were the old grandstands, tic tac dude signalling prices from the rails to the hill,etc, etc,the atmosphere was definately exciting, those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end......  


My heart was singing – this was the life!

As we alighted from the car, Jim Roberts said to me: “We go on the Hill at Flemington, Paul. My brother, Gerry, will meet us inside with his wife. It costs too much for them to go inside. They usually only come to Flemington meetings, so we always go on the Hill here. Still, you can see just the same on the Hill – and do your money just as easily.”

While Eric Johnson parked the car we rushed to catch the first race, while newsboys shouted “Guide or Circle; get your form guide.” Up the wooden steps and down again to the turnstiles, impatient yet chattering light-heartedly in the queue, racing headlong up the bitumen path to the Hill enclosure…..
Jim Roberts joined a queue to the boxes where racebooks are sold and returned with a book for each of us. A race crowd is easily exploited: first the railways and the taxi drivers, then the entrance fee, then the racebook, then two shillings and sixpence for a pie and tea or seven shillings for a cold lunch, then the bookmakers and tote and, of course, the Government’s Tax on both. On leaving the course, however, they cannot be exploited, for the majority of them have little or no money left.
I discovered that they had a pre-arranged meeting- place. We met at the small bar at the back of the tote, ten minutes before and just after each race. I went out on to the banked steps of the open stand to watch the first race; and, although I did not bet, I was captivated by the atmosphere of risk, of excitement, of strange good fellowship.

What a spectacle! The animals and their jockeys striving over the gruelling strewn track – and the people now hushed, now shouting excitedly.  The favourite and an outsider jumped the last fence together and the crowd alternated between shouting and straining their ears to hear the course announcer above their own voices. The favourite was beaten by a neck.

Back at the meeting- place I found my companions gathered. Jim came back from the bar with his fists full of beer glasses. They held a post-mortem.

“I had that favourite going for a hatful,” Jim Roberts said. “If it had jumped the last well it would have won. But that’s racing…. Did you have a bet, Paul?
”
“No, Jim, I’m a new chum.”

Gerald Roberts introduced me to his wife, a simply dressed, attractive little woman. They all had their form guides out, studying the next race.

“Don’t bet on the next race,” Jim advised them. “It’s a bad race.” Turning to me he added. “Are you going to have a bet, Paul?”

“Well, I’d like to, but I don’t understand the game…”

“Well, leave this alone, and I’ll mark your book for a few later races. This is a novice race. Bad horses. Your money is good, so don’t put it on bad horses or bad jockeys – that’s what I always say.”
As the afternoon progressed I became more and more enchanted with my new friends and with horse-racing. After each race we would have a drink then separate to place our bets. On three occasions during the afternoon when they wanted to have a big bet, Jim, Tom Sparks and Dapper Dan departed for the paddock ring and the Bird Cage where they sought information. This was a costly and, no doubt inconvenient business, but Jim went through it in order to have the company of Gerald and his wife and the others followed him as in all things. But they always returned, soon after each race, to rejoin us.

“Well, Paul,” Jim said to me before the third race. “I think you should have a bet on this. On the favourite. It’ll be short but looks a class above the others.”

Walking towards the betting ring, I was gripped by mixed feelings. I took a five pound note from my wallet. My hands were trembling, my heart pounding. The act of plunging into gambling attracted me strongly, but my disciplined habits revolted at the prospect. The price of the favourite was two to one. Should I bet the whole five pounds? No, one pound would be enough. I mustn’t let this game get me in too much. I approached a bookmaker.

Then, as if someone else had spoken, I said: “Give me five pounds on Comic Court.”

Then, as if someone else had spoken, I said: “Give me five pounds on Comic Court.”

When Jack Purtell brought the big horse around the leaders at the turn and rode it hands and heels to an easy win, I shall never forget the overwhelming satisfaction I experienced.

I backed five more horses without winning, but three of them ran a place and the one in the last race was beaten in a photo finish.

We all lost on the day.

Dapper Dan seemed to back about four horses in every race; among them were three winners but, of course, he lost too.
Harry Walton bet skilfully but with a tinge of desperation and complained after every race but one that he “went off that winner at the last moment.”

Ton Sparks lost, but he had a lot of fun, laughing and joking much of the time, enjoying the gamble and the friendship.
Eric Johnson lost, too; he did so meanly and without enjoyment; a five shilling tote ticket here, a four shilling double there until he’d spent our fares.

Gerald Roberts lost his limit of thirty shillings, as if he expected no other result and treated this as his form of relaxation. His wife lost her five shillings, which I learned she bet in single shillings, sharing Gerald’s modest investments. She bet, it seemed to me, only because Gerald liked his day at the races and harmed her not at all thereby.
Jim Roberts lost, too, but as we walked towards the exit, he said: “I lost a few hundred, but I had five terrific results going. That last one that got beat in the photo, for instance, if he’d had a longer nose I’d have won two thousand. That’s racing…..”

We piled into the car and were silent for a while, pondering the consequences of our losses.

Then Jim began to sing:

People who wager on horses
See their castles go up in smoke
But horses don’t bet on people –
And that’s why they never go broke.


How often in the months ahead I was to hear him sing that song. “Horses don’t bet on people….” It was his theme song at a party and, as an encore, he would sing interminable verses of a song that quite intrigued me, “Paddy MacGinty’s Goat.”
We returned to the Caulfield Hotel and had drinks. How warm and friendly, open and genuine they all were compared to my usual friends, or rather acquaintances.


I had lost eight pounds but I was still ahead of the game. And I had won friends and a new vitality, a new warmth.


And I had bought a ticket in the four-legged lottery…………

                                             


                                                    *



Parts of the manuscript are in danger of falling into the hands of the authorities. A prisoner here, a former seaman serving a life sentence for murder, recently smuggled out a series of biographical articles which appeared in a newspaper.
Security in the jail has been tightened up.

The warder who did the smuggling retired from the service in a hurry. That same man had been taking out a copy of my manuscript, piece by piece. The warder who replaced him seemed more than usually trustworthy because he was more than usually corrupt, but the Bush Lawyer was hesitant.

“I’m trying him out on little jobs,” he told me. “Meantime, you’d better give me all the writings you’ve got in your cell.

There might be a search.”

They call the new warder Little Sport because of his resemblance to that cartoon character. The Bush Lawyer has given him several jobs to do. He has done them without hesitation – but he asks a lot of questions.

Meanwhile my copy of the manuscript and three copies of the most recent chapter are hidden somewhere in the jail, and I hesitate to work further on the novel until the problem is solved.


                                                 


                                                    24



After my first visit to the racecourse, the old and new fought out a battle within me. A sense of guilt soon began to afflict me. Fancy me, Paul Whittaker, squandering eight pounds on horses! What would Julia say? What would the bank authorities say? And fancy me leading a deceitful double life!

I resolved never to bet again! I didn’t for many weeks. I continued to drink with Jim and his friends though. And I listened with growing interest to their racing talk, their forecasts on Fridays, their résumés on Mondays. They were having a winning run, they said, and Jim’s bank account rose to four thousand five hundred pounds in proof of this.

One Monday, tom Sparks fingered the lapels of a smart overcoat he wore and said: “Well, the bookies bought me a new coat. Thirty Quid’s worth. Nice bitta stuff. It’s a budy!” Turning to me he contended: “You know, Paul, I always buy something solid when I have a win: a lot of furniture in my house is labelled. The big radiogram has a tag on it, won on such and such a horse from such and such a bookie, and so on.”

His remark exercised my mind that evening, while I sat by our gas fire with Julia listening to her serials and quiz sessions on the radio.

Then Julia said: “Paul, we really should buy a radiogram. The Conways have just got a lovely one, with a cocktail cabinet and a three speed motor.”

I felt inclined to say we rarely used the old one we had. But I was seeing visions of prosperity from gambling. There were a few things needed around our home. Julia would never be content until our finances improved. She needed new clothes and so did I. We needed a new car – and to be able to run it every day. The rates and mortgage payments were due. And we needed a higher income and more money in the bank.

The next Saturday, I lied to Julia again, and went to Moonee Valley racecourse with Jim and his friends. My tremendous excitement was not unmixed with secret shame.

I bet very cautiously. I backed the first three winners but resisted the temptation to raise my stake above one pound. On the day, I wagered on six winners, four in Melbourne and two in Sydney (by then special bookmakers were operating on Sydney races on all Melbourne racetracks). I won twenty pounds. Leaving the course, my main feeling was one of self reproach – not because I had gambled but because I had failed to bet more heavily. I should have won a hundred, I told myself.

For some months, I went to the races as often as I could find an excuse to make to Julia. Yet I suffered pangs of conscience. My personality seemed to become wrenched. The revolt against my background, against the monotony of my work and life and against the essential failure of my marriage, seemed to crystallize. That revolt had lain dormant for some years, now it began to erupt in my growing friendship with Jim Roberts – and in the gambling habit. The change was slow. After almost every trip to the racecourse, I swore never to bet again. Once I was so remorseful that I went back to drinking with Trembath for a few days….


My visits to the races remain vivid in my memory, but jumbled as in a kaleidoscope. Scraps of scenes I witnessed, of people I met, of remarks I heard, of facts I learned. A phantasmagoria of that strange, corrupt, fascinating world – Australian horse-racing….


phantasmagoria !!

Phantastic response, TB

Pleased u seem to be relating to and enjoying the story.

Mopey, I must warn you, ure "Number 1" reader status is at risk........ LIFT !!



A phantasmagoria of that strange, corrupt, fascinating world – Australian horse-racing….




Gerald Roberts saying: “The game is run to make money for big-business interests. The racing clubs and horses should be nationalized.”

Rich owners and breeders of thoroughbred horses dominate the Australian racing clubs. The game is run for them. Next come the leading trainers and jockeys, the bookmakers who nearly always win, the government that always gets its totalisator percentages and taxes, the caterers, and the few professional punters. The poor rank-and-file punter runs a bad last; he almost always loses; the game is conducted expressly to exploit him.

Of course, I soon accepted these self-evident facts, yet I continued betting. I was influenced by my belief in the infallibility of Jim Roberts – and I seemed to be mesmerized by the glamour, by the shouting of the bookmakers, by the afternoon of friendship, by the appeal of the gambler’s leap into the dark, by the hope of quick profits………

Jim Roberts saying, as we left the course after a losing day: “At least I know that most of the horses we backed were goers. The majority of horses backed by other punters either weren’t trying to win or couldn’t have won even if they were.”

I learned to know what lay behind that remark.


Owners, trainers and jockeys often pull up horses in collusion or independently. They are in the game to make money. Sometimes they wait for a better price, or for an easier race. Or they just decide to back another horse.  Also, they have a habit of running a horse into form and out of form. After a horse is spelled, it comes back above itself in condition. It is then raced into condition. It runs two or three times unfancied, dead because it couldn’t win even if it tried, and the jockey is instructed not to knock it about. It reaches the peak of condition and perhaps wins a race or two, then it begins to lose condition again, it trains off. Before being spelled, it races out of condition.

“They do that to get weight off a hose’s back,” Jim explained. “They have to do it. The handicapper raises a horse’s weight when it wins, and weight will beat the best of them, eventually. Even the few honest owners and trainers have to stop the handicapper from getting a horse’s measure.”

Dapper Dan coming back from the Bird Cage and calling Jim aside furtively: “So and so, Jim,. Be a moral. Been given every assistance.” Dapper Dan narrowed his eyes and touched his upper lip with the tip of his tongue – an expression he adopted only when he really knew something.

Jim laughing and saying: “Been sniffing round the stalls again, have yer, you old bloodhound?” Then he became serious: “A jigger job, eh?”

He told me. A jigger is a battery. It is not used in the actual race. A horse is “hit with it” on the training tracks.

“But what did you mean about sniffing round the stalls?”

Again Jim was quite frank. He knew I could be trusted. I only reveal this sordid story now because he told me to do so during our remand yard talks.

“Well, Paul, horse-racing is not a kindergarten. A horse is hit with the battery on the track, usually on the morning of the actual race. They rub a mixture called Penetaine on the horse’ sides. This acts as a conductor. In the actual race, the jockey hits the horse with the spurs or the whip at the same point of the track, and the sensation is like that that of the battery. You can smell the mixture a mile off, but it doesn’t show in a swab.”

That horse won by three lengths. And I think I saw the point at which it received the spurs, the imitation of the battery. After turning into the straight, the horse bounded as if struck by lightning.

Jim told me afterwards that the use of the battery is rare. A horse is soon worn out by the frantic exertion and develops some immunity to the treatment.

Not so rare, commonplace, in fact is the use of dope.

One day at Caulfield, Jim introduced me to the foreman of a well-known training stable. A strong, clean-cut fellow and an expert horse-breaker, he appealed to me as a good type of man. A non-bettor himself (he was engaged to be married and his fiancée would not permit him to gamble), he often gave Jim inside information.

As we left the stall, I said to Jim: “He seems a nice fellow.”

“One of the best,” Jim replied.

Tom Sparks endorsed this opinion with a characteristically crude expression. At first his bawdy slang had offended my susceptibilities – but I was getting used to it.

“He really is a good bloke,” Jim reiterated, “as racing men go. But he dopes horses. Look now. See that fellow talking to him; the bloke in the homburg hat?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s the mad doctor. Used to be a Collins Street surgeon. Took to punting. Lost all his money. Now he prepares dope for horse trainers.  He makes more money this way than cutting out appendixes – but he loses it all punting horses. Bet on two flies crawling up a wall, he would. He dopes the horses and can’t win – what hope have we got…”

Jim insisted then, and later here inside the jail walls, that the majority of race winners are doped. So prevalent is doping, that the most honest trainer in Australia dare not risk a horse in an important race without “assistance”. Jim said all the champion horses of the Australian turf in the past twenty-five years have been treated with dope.

Jim Roberts saying: “Dope can’t make a horse fast, but it can make a fast horse faster, make a good horse do better than its best.”

Jim explained to me in the yard that a horse must be absolutely fit and up to the class of his opponents before dope can be used effectively.

“What about the stewards?”

Jim replied that the stewards act against dope rings (usually operated by bookmakers) which dope horses to make them lose.

“What about the two horses that lost those races in Sydney,” I persisted, quite unable to believe that this sordid aspect of racing really existed.

“They were Victoria horses,” Jim said. “Their trainers used the old-fashioned Melbourne stings. In Sydney the stewards take swabs of every placed horse.”

“So they can’t dope horses in Sydney,” I replied somewhat triumphant.

My feeling of triumph was short lived. Jim convinced me that doping remained just as prevalent in Sydney as Melbourne. Swabbing of horses was introduced in an attempt to restore public confidence in racing, but the “smarties” soon found stings that didn’t show on a swab.

The old-fashioned stings included nicotine acid to accentuate the horse’s heart beat; strychnine to make the horse’s muscles contract better; caffeine and heroin to dull the nerve centres of fatigue in the horse’s brain, these being a safety valve which lets a horse know when it has had enough. All of these drugs can be detected in saliva or urinal tests. In Sydney, their use has been supplanted by hormone drugs which cannot be detected in any test. Cortisone, for instance, is already in the horse’s system; additional doses improve the horse’s performance without producing a positive swab. There are other drugs which normally produce a positive swab, but this can be prevented if an antidote is fed to the horse. Tranquiliser drugs are used on horses that are highly strung and shy of crowds. Many trainers have come to view the use of drugs as a natural extension of scientific feeding.

Jim Roberts saying: “Bookmakers can’t get along without horse-racing, but horse-racing can get along without bookmakers.”

Infamous instances of nobbling horses were often discussed. Cheery Jack, the great nimble-footed steeplechaser discovered blinded with dope on the way to the post for the Melbourne Grand National. Bookmakers could not have met their commitments had he won the race, as he assuredly would have done, ridden by the one-and-only Laurie Meenan.

And the attempt to shoot the mighty Phar-Lap…..

Tom Sparks advising: “Don’t back that horse, Paul. It’s been bagged.”

“Bagged?”

This can be done by the owner or the jockey, but more often it’s done by the trainer, sometimes without the knowledge of either the owner or the jockey. A trainer gets a horse “in the market”. He approaches a bookmaker or a group of bookmakers through an intermediary. The horse will not win if they pay up; he is prepared to “bag it”, to run it for the bookmakers. This horse drifts in the market. Those bookmakers in the know and eventually their shrewd confreres are anxious to lay it. Its price gradually increases. It gets the “Joe Blows” as the punters put it. Of course, a dead horse which has not been bagged will also drift in the market but in that case the bookmakers are lengthening its price just because there is no money for it. Occasionally, a horse might drift and still win. An SP job (a horse backed away from the course); or a horse from a non-betting stable that drifts in the market because of pressure of money for other horses.

“But what about the stewards? Surely they know this goes on!”

Occasionally, the stewards enquire into inconsistent running. The trainer asserts that he has backed the horse – and produces betting tickets to prove it. Bookmakers in the know have supplied the trainer with fictitious betting tickets to prove the horse has been backed. Usually, the explanation is accepted. Occasionally, a jockey might be disqualified for rough riding but inconsistent running is more difficult to prove, so action against it is rare.

Jim Roberts standing in front of the stand of a rails bookmaker, explaining how a book is made to collect a percentage whichever horse wins. This percentage varies from, say, 12 and a half per cent if a well-backed horse wins to 100 per cent if a rank outsider gives a “skinner”. A bookmaker applies the “over-round” method as it is called in England, or the “round-robbin”, as it is called in Australia. A hypothetical case; if a bookmaker, in a four horse race, bets odds of five to two about each horse, he would win 12 and a half per cent of his turnover whichever horse won, provided he held the same amount for each horse. Of course, the extent to which the over-round can be operated varies from race to race and there are occasions when weight of money for a winner leaves a book-making losing on a race. But, in the long run, the over-round makes it a mathematical impossibility for a bookmaker to lose.

Jim Roberts and Tom Sparks revealing to me the flotsam and jetsam of the racecourses.

The urgers.

A man accosting me at Flemington saying: “I’ve got the winner of this next race. So-and-so. Don’t tell a soul.”

Tom Sparks intervening: “Don’t listen to him, Paul. That’s old ‘Don’t tell a soul’, the urger. He gives you a tip and then persuades you to put a few quid on it for him. Gives a different horse to every victim. Must pick a winner occasionally.”

The mail-order tipsters.

Jim Roberts pointing out a gaudily dressed man in the Caulfield Hotel: “That’s ‘please find enclosed’. He sends out tips to people on a mug’s list. Sends a different horse to every customer. Got his nickname because he reckons he only reads letters that begin with the words ‘please find enclosed’.”

The punch-drunk jockeys.

Me laughing aloud at a humorous remark of Tom Sparks or a bitter Australian slang term of Harry Walton’s. A man nearby interjecting: “Don’t laugh at me. I’ll get a good ride one of these days and win a big race.”

Jim Roberts explaining: “That fella’s what we call a punch drunk jockey. A good apprentice years ago, got too heavy, dreams of the day he’ll stage a come back.”

The phoney “nod-bettors”.

A man rushing headlong, scattering people, to make a large bet “on the nod”.

Jim Roberts warning: “Don’t follow his lead, Paul. He’s employed by the bookies to start a rush on a dead horse. Used to be a big professional punter, went broke, now works for the bookies to get the mugs in.”

The pie-eaters.

Tom Sparks commenting: “Look at ‘em.  Here, out on the Flat, on the Hill, even in the members’ enclosure. Pie and tomato sauce. Gravy running down one side of the sleeve, sauce sown the other. Leaning forward away from the wind…Hoo. Hoo. A nation of bloody pie-eaters.”

The talking jockeys.

Jim Roberts taking me back of the course in the Flat enclosure to hear the boys debate during a race.
Experienced riders shouting angry words to intimidate apprentice boys. Top jockeys buying a run: “Let me through for twenty quid.” Collusion: “Where’s the favourite? I’m supposed to finish behind it.”

The incredible skill of Australian horsemen:

Darby Munro stealing a weight for age race on a moke. Snozzle Purtell timing his run, getting up in a punishing photo finish.  Nevvie Selwood, a great judge of pace, clocking the horses in his mind, during a race. George Moore, a better business man than he is a rider – and that’s saying something. “Professor Thompson never beaten in a photo finish, nudging the favourite over the line to win by a hair on its chin. Billy Williamson coldly planning his race, riding mean and winning. Ronnie Hutchison, a specialist in long distance races, getting the wrap up from his mates, Des Hoysted and Frank O’Brien – “ridden in copy-book style by Hutchie”. “Scobie” Breasley going the shortest way home. “Digger” McGrowdie has won more cups than a champion golfer.

The battling trainers.

Jim Roberts telling me: “That bloke just tipped me one of his horse. It couldn’t win if it started now. A battler. Got a few scrubbers. Picks up a race in the bush occasionally. Likes to run his horses in the city. Dreams of the day he’ll buy a horse for twenty quid and win a Derby. But those days are gone. If one of his mokes is sick he sleeps in the stall with it and gets the best vet in Melbourne. If his missus got sick he’d give her a couple of Aspros.”

The system punters

considering this is over 50 years ago ... it is beutiful to read the methodologies have changed so little ...
was there no Mounting Yard Assessments in the good old days 

don’t gamble as much as we do – society has found other ways of demoralizing them, like the bodgie cult, for instance.”

i used to like the widgies a bit

on behalf of joel .. can i ask .. what time is your beddy bye time ?

a great read - many thx spoon

lol DA ... i would ask joel that very same question ... if he was about tonight

this book is sweetly written ... from the knowledge of experience lol ... a most enjoyable read again

cheers again spoon ... your horse is travelling smoothly and under a good hold 

was such a lovable little fella. He had the kindest nature I ever came in contact with……..”



Seeking to change the subject, I interrupted to ask him about the drawings. This diverted his mind and he began to tell me how the caricatures came to be executed. They were, indeed, quite clever, I observed. Encouraged, he gave me animated word pictures of some of the characters portrayed. “That’s old ‘Duck’ Rudkin there, that’s why I’ve got the web feet on him. And that’s ‘Flukor’ Smithers – see all the snooker balls going into the pockets – he had more arse than a married cow playing snooker, I can tell yer. And that’s Curly Condon. See him laughing; never stopped laughing, old Curly…”

Finally, he said: “I’m going to take up drawing again. Haven’t done any for five years, but I’ll soon get my hand in again.” He pulled a drawing board from under the bed.  It was ink-stained, and pock-marked with drawing-pin holes. “This is the old board. Dad made it for me when I ws a kid. I’ll press it into service again. I’m sick of the life I’m leading.”

His garrulous emotion had exhausted him. “Here, we’ll have another drink,” he said. “I s’pose you’ve got troubles of your own without listening to mine.”

And for the first time in my life I confided in someone. I told Jim Roberts about the vague dissatisfaction with life that troubled me.

I left him soon afterwards. I travelled home somewhat stunned at the unexpected tragedy in Jim’s life. From that time our friendship deepened, and we were swept headlong towards disgrace and disaster. I do not blame Jim for my downfall; but, to this night, I am prey to dread nightmares in sleep, and haunting fears in waking, that I led him to the gallows more surely than his executioner. I can only repulse such anguish by remembering Jim’s own assertion that the final tragedy came as a relief to a life which had lost meaning.

I was happy in those months. They ended with me disgraced before all men. Yet, given my time over, I would live through it again – except the death of Jim Roberts.

That night when I reached home, the hour was late. Julia was sitting up in bed reading a magazine. “You smell like a wine shop,” she complained. “You’re drinking far too much, Paul, and spending too much money. It’s the company you’re keeping.”

“Oh, shut up,” I found myself saying. I’d never spoken to her so brutally before. An hysterical argument followed. Poor Julia, I treated her badly towards the end, yet I can feel little sorrow, little pity……


Jim Roberts visited his father frequently. Sometimes he went with Gerald and Gerald’s wife after having had dinner with them. More often he went alone. I accompanied him one Friday evening. Tom Roberts was dying a painful, lingering death of stomach cancer in a private hospital and, I gathered, Jim was paying the heavy fees. As we entered his sick-room the old man, his hair snow-white, his face lined with pain, his hands skeleton-like on top of the bed-clothes, looked up. His eyes heavy with pain and drugs, brightened a little.

“Hello, Jim,” he said, weakly.

“And how do you feel tonight, Dad?”

“Oh, much the same, Jim. I’ve just had an injection. They ease the pain but make me sleepy.

Jim introduced me to his father. We shook hands and his fingers had the feel of death. On top of the little chest of drawers beside the bed I noticed a copy of the same wedding photo of Tom and Cissie Roberts as was in Jim’s room. Jim placed beside it a bag of fruit he had brought.

With an effort that was apparent to me, Jim assumed a breezy air; “Well, how’s the old punter? Have you sorted out a winner for me?”

“Well, I studied them this morning and sorted out a few roughies, as usual. The paper’s here somewhere; in the cupboard, I think.”

Jim found the paper. He and I sat either side of the bed. They fell to discussing the race form, ignoring me. The old chap had brightened up; gambling came now as an angel of mercy to soothe the pain and sorrow which were destroying him.

“You’d better have a final study,” Jim said, after a while. “I’ve got the lot here: The Guide The Judge The Circle and tonight’s Herald…”

Tom Roberts, apparently thinking they were treating me with discourtesy said: “Jim’s told me about you, Mr. Whittaker. You work in a bank. It’s a good steady job. That’s what my wife, God rest her soul, used to say to Jim and his brother; ‘If only you could get a steady job’….”

“Yes, Mr. Roberts, working at the bank has its compensations,” I said.

They fell again to talking horses, the old man glancing through the papers.

“You know, Jim, I think Swordsman might be the bet of the day tomorrow, in the Welter. Des Judd has got Crevasse in, too, but I think Swordsman might be the pea.”

“Righto, now,” Jim said. “I’ll tell yer, I’ve got the tip about it. Old Dapper Dan earwigged at the track. Swordsman is the pea.”

“I’ll make it my main bet in that case, Jim,” the old man said.

After more race talk, it was time to go.

“You’d better give me your bets, Dad,” Jim said.

“Righto, son, if you can manage it.”

“Manage it! The bookies are keeping me in the lap of luxury.”

Tom Roberts recited a list of small bets, which Jim wrote down with exaggerated care, and soon we took our farewells.

Outside, Jim said: “I put a quid’s worth of bets on for the old fella every Saturday. I’ve bought him the little wireless there. It’s his only pleasure.”

Swordsman won the next day and Jim had a much needed win. I won fifty pounds. But rashness born of phone betting had led me into debt with Pittson; my winnings only enabled me to pay my debt and replace money I had drawn from my banking account. I had strayed far into the quicksands of gambling. The excuse of working back had worn thin with Julia. I hadn’t been able to go to the races. I was betting above my means with Pittson. I’d lay my bets out each Saturday morning and listen to as many races as possible without alerting Julia.

in a bit of bother ... is our paul ... can he box a bit ?   

prevent them accusing me. I knew they could scarcely have any suspicions, but….


When Trembath arrived, late as usual, I began a conversation with him about the weather, the football results and a train accident reported in the morning papers. I had never before greeted him with any more than a formal “good morning” for, even in the period when we took regular afternoon beer together, our relationship was properly confined to bank matters.

Trembath welcomed the conversation as though he, too, talked to hide an inner fear, a fear that I and the staff would discover he was a secret alcoholic. As if we hadn’t perceived that already.
Soon the bank doors were opened and each went to his allotted task. A steady flow of customers kept me busy. My whole being was focused on the worry within me. Pittson will bank that cheque today; it will arrive here tomorrow.

I could not help smiling at the irony of my having issued a valueless cheque to a bookmaker. For some years, Trembath and I had taken a professional interest in cheques issued to bookmakers by some of our clients. Indeed, we had gone so far as to keep a recent racebook in the office to check if clients with dubious overdrafts were paying large amounts to legal bookmakers whose names were listed. We could not object to our clients betting, but we did object to them betting with money advanced by the bank for other purposes. What would Trembath say if he knew I had issued a large cheque to a bookmaker? My bookmaker was not listed in the racebook, but my case was more serious; there was no money even on overdraft to meet the cheque.

Soon after morning tea, I developed a mental aberration; the money I was handling became real, it was money with value and I needed money badly.

Previously I had taken the typical bank teller’s attitude to the money I handled; an impersonal attitude as a grocer takes to a bottle of sauce; the money had no existence except as a commodity in which the bank traded. But now it was money – money that could meet my cheque. As the notes passed to and fro under the grille and I flick-counted them, they began to fascinate me. To the coins my attitude was still impersonal but to the notes….

Soon, I was shocked to find myself coldly calculating how to steal money from the bank. Theft is a subject often discussed among bank officials, for theft by bank employees is not as rare as is often supposed. Banks take elaborate precautions against being defrauded by their employees, perfecting their accounting systems and procedures over the decades to frustrate the would-be thief, to remove the temptation of theft.

There is a legendary story of a Bank of England teller in the last century, who defrauded the bank of a huge sum over a period of years. He was very conscientious, so conscientious indeed that he refused to take holidays. Eventually he became seriously ill and his malpractice was discovered. From then on, the Bank of England insisted that all employees take annual holidays, and other banks followed suit. To this day, relieving managers and relieving tellers are looked upon as an antidote to theft, as well as a means of enabling employees to take their annual holidays according to law.
In large city banks, no teller is allowed access to the ledgers for fear familiarity with individual accounts would enable him to defraud the bank by suppressing credits. As some humorist once said: “It’s not that they don’t trust the tellers, they just want to stop them stealing money, that’s all.”

In spite of all precautions, banks are often defrauded by employees, for no accounting system can eliminate the human factor. The press frequently features news of bank employees being imprisoned for theft, and not all cases reach the courts.
 
The human factor! I was virtually manager of this bank; I knew the state of every account. In a kind of dream, a treacherous voice whispered: “You could suppress a credit, or several credits, without fear of immediate detection.” I was shocked at the very thought. But if I didn’t suppress a credit, the valueless cheque I had uttered would be dishonoured tomorrow and I would still owe Pittson a further hundred and twenty-five pounds. While I served my customers, I juggled with the dilemma. Perhaps I could get my hands on the mail before Trembath, as I sometimes did in the normal course, mark the cheque “refer to drawer”, and return it. But it would be just like Trembath to stumble into detecting my valueless cheque.

I resolved to ring Pittson at lunch time. Tell him to hold the cheque. Tell him I can’t meet it. Tell him I can’t pay him and will not pay him. He had no legal call on me – except the cheque! Why should I wreck my life for a sniffing bookmaker and his arrogant assistant?
What if he had banked the cheque already?

Suppress a credit today!

I grappled with the thought. Imagine my name and Julia’s dragged in the mud over a worthless cheque. Julia would die of shame! I’d just have to tell him he wasn’t going to get paid…. But then Jim would find out I had defaulted! And the bookmaker had that cheque; issuing a valueless cheque is a criminal offence these days!

Even if I could suppress a credit big enough to meet my commitments, such a process was likely to take several days, for I would have to find a suitable deposit in a suitable account….
At that moment I noticed a certain Mr. Page enter the bank and join the short queue waiting in front of me. When his turn came we exchanged greetings. He pushed a cash bag towards me containing a deposit book, cheques and money, the banking for a second-hand car sales company of which he was proprietor.

Mr. Page is a member of the new rich who have prospered in Australia in the post war boom years. He is a pleasant enough fellow in a garish insensitive way, sporting a diamond ring and American style clothes. Page banked cheques and money in his firn’s account. My hands were trembling as I stamped his deposit book, made up the parcels of change he had listed and pushed the bag across the counter to him.

Suddenly, a relaxed air of fatalism came over me. There was no way out….. I’d have to face the music…
Just then Page pulled a bundle of notes from his inside coat pocket and handed it to me with a loose deposit slip.

“Five hundred in my own private account,” he said with the smugness of a man who values money and makes it easily.

Suppress a credit!

I stamped the deposit slip, slid the butt back across the counter.

“I’d better have a statement of both accounts,” Page said. I went to the ledger and made them out. A brisk farewell and he left hurriedly with that bustling air of the self-confident man of business.
Suppress a credit!

Scarcely knowing what I was doing, acting involuntarily, as it were, I cast a quick glance around me and pocketed the deposit slip and the five hundred pounds.