Victorian Vice- The Turf

From the early 1700s to the early 1900s, horseracing reigned over English sport. Organized English horseracing (known as “the Turf”) took shape in the 1600s, and the sport grew in popularity and regulation. Seen as the “Sport of Kings”, the Gaming Act of 1739 tried to restrict participation in the sport to the aristocracy.  High entrance fees kept the riff-raff from competing, and enforcing prize purses of £50 or more should have killed smaller illegal tracks. In reality, the act proliferated illegal horse races. As Victorian England’s enthusiasm for horseracing grew, so too did their enthusiasm for betting on horse races. Faced with a national pastime, the Gaming Act of 1845 and the Betting Act of 1853 kept gambling at racetracks within the law.

Freed from the hypocritical facades of golden halls and the seedy backrooms of copper hells, gambling racketeers publicly ply their trade at Ascot, Epsom, and other racing towns. During a race day, a haphazard city of tents and booths surround every track in England. Enthusiasts arrive early to play Hazard, Roulette, Faro, and simple games of chance and return to play between races. Most of these temporary gambling dens stay open all day and all night. Although racetracks charge exorbitantly high rent on their grounds during racing season, purveyors of table games rake in a bundle in the carnival atmosphere of a race day. In fact, some smaller racetracks would close if they lost this revenue and the customers attracted by on track gambling. The bosses of the most notorious copper hells leave London for race weekends in the country. In their dishevel booths, they rob ten or twenty customers an hour with crooked games and return home weighted with disreputable riches.

Of course, the government did not legalize gambling at racetracks as a courtesy to table games and cardsharps, but for wagers over horseracing. At the track, bookmakers busily give odds for upcoming races and make hundreds of wagers at all hours of the day. Most won’t accept any bets under half a crown. Fake bookmakers stalk raceways stealing from inexperienced tourists. They take a bet, pocket the stakes, and disappear into the crowd.

While hordes of lower-class gamblers flock to bookmakers at racetracks, the rich prefer to make their bets in more refined and exclusive circumstances. The most famous betting parlor is Tattersalls in London.  Tattersalls is not a gentleman’s club, nor a gambling hall, but the premier racehorse auction house in England frequented by a select group of aristocratic gamblers intent on organized and respectable betting on the Turf. Its members belong to all levels of society. Race enthusiasts, horse breeders, jockeys, grooms, and gamblers all rub shoulders at Tattersalls. For a monthly subscription of £3 3s, persons accepted by the election committee receive access to club bookmakers, Tattersall’s drinking room (the “Turf Tap”), the ability to place bets months before a race starts, and the insider knowledge of fellow members.

Cheating in horseracing is as old as the Turf itself, and the number of moving parts involved in a large race leaves many gaps for deceitful knavery. Thugs harm, hobble, or dope horses to muck up their performance on the track. In more “informal” races, large dogs trained to attack certain horses pull favorites out of the running. Even in regulated racing, owners enter horses too young or too old for certain races with falsified papers. In one case a horse named Leander was suspected of being a year too old to compete, but it died before officials could examine its teeth for age. When officials exhumed the carcass they found someone had already dug Leander up and stolen its head. The Jockey Club barred Leander’s owners from future races.