Working out - But not as You Know it.

This new job of mine, after leaving the RAF, is proving harder than I expected. Mental arithmetic was not my speciality. This job was 80% mental arithmetic! Am I mental? Don't all yell yes at once please...

The currency in the 1950s/60s was duo-decimal. Base 12, not base 10. There were 240 pennies in £1. 12 pennies in a shilling. 20 shillings in £1. There were other coins: farthings (4 farthing = 1 penny), halfpennies, threepenny bits, sixpenny bits, shillings and half-crowns. A half-crown was two shillings and sixpence. There were 8 half-crowns in £1.

Following me? Good. That's very good! Thank goodness we went decimal in the 1970s.

I remember struggling with how to work out a simple bet; well, simple to my colleagues in the bookie's office. The punter had half-a-crown to win at 13/8, (the price of the winner he'd backed). How much money was due to him? I did my best to calculate it using a pencil and paper. I made it 6/5d. Six shillings and five pence, including his half-crown stake money.

Dicky Cox said it was wrong! I couldn't believe it. He called out to Tony, another settler: "Tony, tell him what half-crown at 13/8 is..." Tony's reply came back instantly: "Six and Seven..." meaning 6/7d. I couldn't believe that anybody could have worked out this bet so fast.

Of course Tony was correct. However, it later dawned on me that he hadn't "worked it" out at all. He and others in this business simply knew what the answers to a myriad of combinations simply from memory. I felt dejected. I couldn't imagine that I had the capacity to cope with this numbers game.

Dicky Cox was a good friend and he tutored me. He showed me how he and others broke the "price" down into sub-fractions. He said: 13/8 is simply one-and-five-eighths to one. Five eighths is easily broken down to 'one half plus a quarter of the half'. He went steadily through other fractional prices, some trickier to break down than others. There are dozens to deal with: odds-on and odds-against.

An odds-on price is anything less than even money. Even money is 1/1. 4/6 is "six to four on" ... while 6/4 is six to four against. There were horrible prices like 100/7 - which translates to "bet £7 and if the horse wins you win £100, plus your £7 stake back". Other nasties: 4/7, 8/13, 8/11, 4/9 plus their reverse "odds against" prices, such as 7/4 and so on.

"Settling" bets meant, of course, that one had to know exactly the result of every race as they occurred. If there were six race meetings that afternoon we would have at least 36 results to remember. And not just the winners name! People loved to back horses "each way" which meant a horse could come 1st, 2nd, or 3rd (and sometimes even 4th).

So, we had to remember the names and prices of around 144 horses in order to work out a punter's returns. Of course, we also had to know which horses had run and lost, or perhaps been a non-runner. If the settler inadvertently crossed out a winner it would not only upset the punter it could cause a hefty liability to the bookie.

Say a punter had a £1 win treble and the settler had mistakenly crossed out the first horse on the slip as a loser, but in fact it was a winner. That betting slip would go into the "loser" pile. However, if the other two horses on the slip also won then the punter would have a winning treble, which, depending on the prices, could come to a tidy sum.

Whilst doing all this "settling" of bets we had to answer the telephones at the same time, taking down more and more bets. It was an awful strain during my first few months in the bookie business.

I stuck with it right through to 1972; sixteen years of it. During this time I met with some 'colourful' types, on both sides of the job. I'll tell about some of them next time.

Tricks, Traps and Tips in the Bookie Game

Everybody knows the bookie always wins. Right? Wrong! Well anyway, they didn't always win in the 1950s. There were plenty of punters out to rob the bookie by hook or by crook.

One day I opened a "clock bag" and tipped out the grubby contents. Old fag packets, scrap paper and anything that could be written on. Racing had started about an hour or so earlier. The time stamp of the clock bag was OK. It had been closed and locked five minutes before the first race. All seemed well until I found one of the betting slips rolled up into a tight, thin cylinder. Unusual, and even more so when I unrolled the slip and found it had three winning horses on it. A £5 win treble, which came to over £100 in "winnings".

Called the boss and showed him. He was furious, and experience told him this was a very fishy betting slip. For one thing he always told his runners that any "large" bets should be phoned in before the races started. A £5 treble was, in those days, a large and potentially dangerous bet.

I told him how I'd found the betting slip tightly rolled up when I opened the bag. He inspected the clock bag closely and found that the seam at the bottom had been tampered with. The stitching had been cut in one small section. The allowed the rolled up slip to be pushed into the sealed and timed clock bag. Somebody had got the three winners, written out the dodgy £5 treble, rolled it up and slipped it into the small hole in the seam.

There were only two people who could have done this trick: the runner himself or the taxi driver who had brought the bag from the factory to our office. It did not take long to work out who the culprit was. Normally the taxi picked up the clock bag from this factory about 5 minutes after the first race of the day. On this occasion the taxi driver said he'd been told to leave it until about 40 minutes later that day. The runner had no real excuse for this and thus condemned himself.

He lost a fairly lucrative little side-line and was lucky not to have been roughed up for "trying it on" with Arthur Horton Ltd! Had the runner not been so greedy he might have got away with some smaller scams - but not a fiver treble!

One day we had a couple of chaps call at the office saying they could take a few bets at their workplace. Were we interested? Yes, said Arthur, we are. These two guys said they would bring the betting slips directly to the office just before the first race each day, together with the cash. That's fine we said. No problem. But there was.

I have to explain that in those long gone days there were no "overnight declarations" of runners in horse racing. As a result there were often lots of "non-runners" in each race. It was this fact that our two new "runners" had latched onto.

Next afternoon they arrived at the office. Racing was just about to begin. One of the men pulled out a pocketful of cash: £5, £1 and ten-shilling notes, all screwed up, along with lots of coins. They said, "Let's get the money checked out first of all please.." and the boss was happy to start sorting it out. Eventually a total was agreed as correct. Then a bundle of betting slips, with an elastic band securing them, was dropped onto the desk and they said "Cheerio, see you tomorrow".

I was given the bundle of betting slips to sort out and start "settling". Surprise, surprise: our new runners had a very nice winning first day! Strangely enough, nearly every betting slip had the first winner of the day, either as a single straight win bet, or in doubles and even trebles. Very strange. Especially as all the doubles and trebles were winning bets, simply because the other "legs" of the doubles and trebles included all non-runners. This meant that all these "multiple" bets became singles, with the first winner of the day as the only runner.

The "profit" on this first day did not amount to a great deal as the first winner was odds-on, meaning it was less than even money. The boss knew he'd been "had over" and he had worked out how these guys had rooked him.

Next day when these two shysters arrived, again about five minutes before the first race, they began their spiel about "checking the cash first." "No", said the boss, "just give me the bets first, and we'll settle the cash afterwards." They were twigged! They handed over a bundle of bets which the boss took hold of. Then they handed over the jumble of money. The boss paid them what they had "won" on the previous day and they left, somewhat dejectedly.

This time all their bets lost. Yes, every betting slip was a loser! They actually lost about twice what they had "won" yesterday. We never saw these two scammers again.

How had they tricked us on the first day? Well, the night before they had written out dozens of bets and each bet had a horse in the first race written as singles, doubles etc., all linked with known "non runners" in the later races. If there were, say, 10 runners in the first race they would have 10 separate bundles of bets. Each bundle would have the name of a horse in the first race in every bet. When they arrived at the office they deliberately delayed handing over the bets until our "boardman" had written the result of the first race on the blackboard. Now they knew the first race winner and all they had to do was pick out the "winning bundle" from their pockets. They had to have a system of remembering which pocket the "winner of the first race" was in.

Another scam involved telephone bets. A credit client would come on the phone from, say, Wimbledon dog track, just before a race was due to start. He would read out a couple of bets for later races and then, just after the first race had finished, he would try to place a largish "forecast" bet. This was a bet to name the first and second dog in correct finishing order. His bet was refused: it was too late! He protested of course, but we knew that he had a person in the stadium who had just tic-tacked the result to him in the phone box. No mobile phones in those days, but where there's a will there's a way.

Settling in a Bookies Office

It's early January, 1956. A strange new world, for me, learning the tricks and trade of "settling".

Betting on horses was something I'd done on a few occasions, such as the Derby and Grand National races. Most people might have a small flutter on these two races but there are many thousands who have a bet every week; or every day; even maybe every hour or so! This was now my job: to take these bets and to "settle" them. Easily said, less easily accomplished.

There were no betting shops in 1956. It would be another five or six years before licensed betting shops started to open. The only way people could bet in the 1950s was either at the racecourse or with a "credit account" with a bookmaker. There was a third way, but it was illegal.

This third way accounted for a good 50% of the business of my boss's setup: bookie's runners betting. A bookie's runner was a person, usually a man, who collected bets from everybody and anybody. This chap would take a slip of paper with the bet written on it, together with the cash for the bet.

The 'runner' would pass all these slips of paper to the bookie, in various ways. The bookie would reward the runner by paying him a 'commission' of, usually, 1/6d (one shilling and sixpence) for every £1-worth of bets. The runner, if he had a good 'pitch' would earn a nice income irrespective of whether these bets won or lost.

1/6d in the £ was 7.5% of the stakes. The risk was that the runner, if caught taking these slips, could end up in jail. Very few were ever caught. One reason for that is the police were usually on the payroll. Yes, the bookie gave a regular 'drink' to the local cop-shop and in return the cop would warn us that our 'runner' was due to be 'nicked' tomorrow! This enabled the bookie to warn the runner, who would then arrange for a substitute to take his place on occasions like this. The 'substitute' runner would thus be a 'first offender' and would draw only a small fine from the magistrates. All very nicely organised; everybody was happy.

These runners were usually sharp-witted people. Some would have a network of sub-agents who would collect bets and hand them to the main runner. The largest sources of these illegal bets were in factories and pubs. Most of these betting slips were collected prior to the first race of the afternoon and placed in strong leather or canvas bags, specially made for the purpose. They were called 'clock bags'.

The runner would close the bag and it would be locked, with a time-clock showing the time of sealing. The bag would then be taken by car or taxi to the bookie's office. The office staff would open it, check the time stamp and add up the total stakes. It was the settler's job to work on these grubby betting slips.

Bets were written on bits of paper, cigarette packets, bits of old cardboard or any other scraps of paper.

The other business was by telephone. Some runners would phone their bets through if they accepted a slip after the clock bag had been closed. However, most phone bets were from private 'credit' clients. These people were slightly more sophisticated punters and would have a set credit limit. They would receive a weekly account of all their bets and were required to pay up any losses each week.

So, there you have it. I was in this small, smoke-filled room, with up to six other people, answering the phone and taking down bets. I would also be working out these various wagers as the minutes ticked by in the afternoons. Whilst racing was in progress it was a pressurised job. All the action was crammed into around three or so hours in the afternoon. Non-stop concentrated effort to keep pace with the racing.

An important aspect of being a bookie's clerk, or settler, was liability. This meant we had to watch out for any bets that might cost the bookie too much. For example, if a punter had placed an accumulator bet and the first three horses had won there might be a large amount building up on the next horse on the bet. Say that the bet was a £1 win accumulator on four horses. The first horse has won at, say, 8-1 and the second has won at 10-1; this would mean that there was now £99 going onto the third horse. If this 3rd horse odds were about 5-1 or so this could put a liability of around £600 on the fourth and final horse of the accumulator.

In such circumstances the settler would tell the bookie and it was then the bookie's decision as to what to do. He might say "Give Ladbrokes £50 to win on the 3rd horse" - thus 'hedging' part of the bet. On the other hand, he might consider the third horse to have no great chance of winning and would simply let the bet run.

Life was never dull in these smoky dens. Phones jangling all afternoon, the ticker tape rattling away as the betting and results came through. The screech of chalk on the blackboard as our 'boardman' wrote up the results for the settlers to work from.

It was all go, go, go. Cups of tea, usually made by the boss, often went cold. Cigarettes frequently burned away on the ashtray as the phones were constantly in use.

This was a steep learning curve period for me. Fortunately, my pal Dicky Cox was a great help. He had introduced me to Arthur Horton, the bookie boss, and he thus wanted to me to get on with the job as quickly as possible. Dicky was an amazingly fast settler; mental arithmetic was his stock in trade. A good friend. One day, some years later, I would be in a position to help him in a similar way.

Tricks and traps of the trade in the next instalment.