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The Police and the People: Gambling in Salford, 1900–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Andrew Davies
Andrew Davies
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

Gambling has received surprisingly little attention from social historians, especially considering the wide growth of interest in working-class leisure over the last decade. The leading historians in this field, including Peter Bailey, Hugh Cunningham and Stephen Jones, have been more concerned with the development of institutional forms of leisure such as the music-hall and the cinema. In the only detailed study of gambling, Ross McKibbin considered the growth of betting on horse racing and the football pools between 1880 and 1939, claiming that gambling constituted a rational pursuit within the economic and intellectual environment of working-class life. McKibbin's pioneering article established that betting was a central feature of working-class leisure, and in a case study of Salford I propose to develop this argument by looking at a wider range of forms of gambling, and by an examination of the survival of betting as an illegal activity. McKibbin dealt only briefly with the question of the policing of gambling. I propose to relate some of the findings of my research to a second concern of recent social history, the impact of policing upon popular recreation.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 87 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 I would like to thank Alastair Reid for his advice and encouragement, and Judith Ayling, Jennifer Davis, V. A. C. Gatrell, Pat Thane and Jerry White for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to all the people who took part in the oral history interviews used in the present study for their assistance and hospitality. Pseudonyms are given in the text in order to preserve the anonymity of the respondents.

Earlier versions of the paper were presented to the Cambridge William Morris Society, in May 1986; the History seminar at the University of Cambridge, in November 1987; and the Modern British History seminar at the University of Cambridge, in February 1988.

2 Bailey, P., Leisure and class in Victorian England: rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830–1885 (London, 1978)Google Scholar, and (ed.), Music hall: the business of pleasure (Milton Keynes, 1986)Google Scholar. Cunningham, H., Leisure in the industrial revolution, 1780–1880 (London, 1980)Google Scholar. Jones, S. G., Workers at play: a social and economic history of leisure, 1918–1939 (London, 1986)Google Scholar, and The British labour movement and film, 1918–1939 (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

3 McKibbin, R., ‘Working class gambling in Britain 1880–1939’, Past and Present, LXXXII (1979). I47–78Google Scholar.

4 For example, Jones, D., Crime, protest, community and police in nineteenth-century Britain (London, 1982)Google Scholar, especially his studies of Manchester and Merthyr.

5 ‘Introduction: persistence and change in nineteenth-century popular culture’ in Storch, R. (ed.), Popular culture and custom in nineteenth-century England (1982), p. 10Google Scholar.

6 Ibid. p. 13.

7 For details of the laws relating to gambling see McKibbin, , ‘Working-class gambling’, pp. 147–8Google Scholar, and Vamplew, W., The turf: a social and economic history of horse racing (London, 1976)Google Scholar, ch.13.

8 Rowntree, B. S. (ed.), Betting and gambling: a national evil (London, 1905)Google Scholar.

9 The background to the class bias of this legislation was discussed by Dixon, D., ‘“Class law”: the Street Betting Act of 1906’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, VIII (1980), 101–28Google Scholar.

10 ‘Pitch and toss’, which consisted of betting on the tossing of coins, and card games such as pontoon and banker were the most widespread forms of street gaming. ‘Crown and anchor’ involved gambling with dice.

11 McKibbin, , ‘Working-class gambling’, p. 148Google Scholar.

12 Jones, , Crime, protest, community and police, p. 162Google Scholar.

13 Samuel, R., East End underworld: chapters in the life of Arthur Harding (London, 1981)Google Scholar, White, J., The worst street in North London: Campbell Bunk, Islington, between the wars (London, 1986)Google Scholarand ‘Police and people in London in the 1930s’, Oral History, XI (1983), 34–41Google Scholar.

14 A total of sixty people were interviewed between 1985 and 1988, and copies of the transcripts will eventually be held in Salford Local History Library. The first reference to each interview used in the text gives the respondent's initials, and date and area of birth. Subsequent references to the interview give the initials only.

15 Roberts, R., The classic slum: Salford life in the first quarter of the century (Harmondsworth, 1973)Google Scholar. For an example of a study which leans heavily upon Roberts' analysis, see Meacham, S., A life apart: the English working class 1890–1914 (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

16 Sullivan, J., The ancient and royal borough of Salford: history, commerce and industries (Salford, 1924)Google Scholar. The diversity of the city's industries was celebrated in the local saying: ‘If a thing's not made in Salford it's not worth making’.

17 Police Review and Parade Gossip, 15 July 1910. Article reprinted from an edition of 1900. The Review was an unofficial professional journal. For a detailed account of ready-money betting in Salford side-streets, and the operation of look-out systems, see the letter to the editor concerning ‘Street Betting in Salford’, Manchester Guardian, 29 April 1890.

18 In Liverpool, look-outs were known as ‘dowses’, Liverpool Council of Voluntary Aid, Report on betting in Liverpool (Liverpool, 1927), p. 4Google Scholar.

19 A description of bookmaker's pitches in Salford was provided by Bowen, William, Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 310Google Scholar. Bowen's account is widely confirmed by oral evidence. The use of nom de plumes was described by many respondents. For example, Mr G.O. born 1907, Ordsall.

20 Interview with Mrs A.M. born 1909, Greengate. Bowen, William also described the use of signals in Salford, , Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 311Google Scholar.

21 Interview with Mr C.W. born 1900, Ordsall; worked as a dock labourer before joining the Salford City Police in 1921.

22 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 4447. Bowen claimed to have visited 120 of the pitches in person during the month prior to his appearance before the commission.

23 See below, section I.

24 Interview with Mr C.P. born 1914, Salford. Incident took place while respondent was living in Hulme, Manchester, during the 1940s. There are many descriptions of the same process in Salford during the interwar period, including Heaton, R., Salford my home town (Swinton, 1982), p. 10Google Scholar; and interview with Mr H.S. born 1910, Ordsall. Similar accounts can be found in the Manchester Studies Tape Collection [M.S.T.C.], held at Manchester Polytechnic. For example, M.S.T.C. 743; Interview with Mr T.P. born 1901, Salford. I am grateful to Dermot Healy for providing access to the collection.

Arthur Harding also went to court as a ‘jockey’, in East London. He claimed that the police provided warnings when raids were due, in return for bribes arranged by one local bookmaker: ‘Jimmy Smith was the man who straightened up the police. The street bookies gave him the money to share out among the different inspectors and sergeants.…’, Samuel, , East End underworld, p. 180Google Scholar. Jerry White argued that in the 1930s: ‘That the police could be “dropped” [bribed] to do favours was common knowledge to every bookie, street seller, thief or prostitute in London’, ‘Police and people in London’, pp. 38–9.

25 Interview with Mr C.P.

26 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 311.

27 Ibid. Q. 4384–93. Bowen alleged that in most cases, ‘jockeys’ were employed a day or two prior to their arrest, although he did not allege that bribery took place, rather pointing out that arranged arrests were convenient for the police.

28 Interview with Mr B.B. born 1910, Greengate, whose uncle was a famous Salford bookmaker; interview with Mr L.P. born 1918, Salford, who claimed that collusion was a ‘known fact’, but also described raids by police dressed as ‘midden men’, commenting that the police favoured ‘co-operative’ bookmakers. The use of disguises was described by Maxwell, John, Chief Constable of Manchester. Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 53Google Scholar.

29 Hilton published a selection of the letters. Hilton, J. (ed.), Why I go in for the pools (London, 1936), pp. 70–1Google Scholar. Bowen noted that if the police ever arrested the person receiving bets at a pitch rather than a jockey, local people concluded that they had ‘got their knife into him’. Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 4460.

30 Roberts, , Classic slum, p. 164Google Scholar.

31 Manchester Guardian, 8 Oct. 1885.

32 Extracts from Salford Watch Committee Minutes, 20 Oct. 1885. Typescript held at Salford Local History Library.

33 Speech made on 19 Nov. 1932; reported in The People, 20 Nov. 1932. The allegations were not new. Green's speech reiterated claims made in his book Betting and gambling (London, 1924), pp. 43–5Google Scholar; and in his column in the Manchester Guardian, 9 May 1928. He wrote a long-standing column for the newspaper using the pen-name ‘Artifex’, frequently commenting upon the evils of gambling, but his criticisms of the police attracted widespread press coverage for the first time in 1932

34 Daily Express, 21 Nov. 1932; Manchester Guardian, 22 and 23 Nov. 1932; Daily Dispatch, 24 Nov. 1932.

35 Manchester Guardian, 24 Nov. 1932.

36 Manchester Guardian, 24 Nov. 1932; Daily Dispatch, 24 Nov. 1932.

37 Manchester Guardian, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29 November 1932.

38 Manchester Guardian, 29 November 1932. An article in support of Canon Green in the News Sheet of the Bribery and Secret Commissions League pointed out that in 1929, nine Liverpool police officers were bound over following a corruption case involving bookmakers, whilst in a similar case in Sheffield in 1930, eleven officers admitted in court that they had taken bribes. However, by January 1933, 45 bookmakers and touts had been prosecuted under the Prevention of Corruption Acts. This confirms Canon Green's own declaration that sections of the police were untouched by bribery, although popular opinion held that collusion was an established feature of urban policing.

39 Extracts from Salford Watch Committee Minutes, 25 Nov. 1935.

40 Manchester Guardian, 8 Jan. 1936.

41 The report was published in the Salford City Reporter, 10 Jan. 1936.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Manchester Guardian, 28 May 1928. Article written under the pen-name ‘Artifex’.

46 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–2, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 7027–30.

47 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Betting, 1902, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 452.

48 Roberts, , Classic slum, pp. 23–4Google Scholar. Oral evidence provides many similar accounts. For example: interview with Mr S.B. born 1919, Lower Broughton.

49 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 310.

50 A ‘knocker-up’ earned a living by waking other workers in the area in time for their work, by rattling a piece of wire on the end of a pole against their windows. A survey of Ancoats in Manchester found that they could earn up to 34 shillings a week, at a rate of sixpence per household, at the end of the interwar period. Manchester University Settlement, Ancoats: a study of a clearance area. Report of a survey made in 1937–1938 (Manchester, 1945), p. 16Google Scholar.

51 Interviews with Mr J.S. born 1914, Ordsall. M.S.T.C. 488; and Mrs L.M. born 1917, Pendleton. One respondent recalled that her father and her husband ha d both ‘dogged-out’ during periods when they were out of work. Interview with Mrs A.S. born 1915, Ordsall.

52 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 311. Interview with Mr C.P.

53 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 310. Few respondents recalled women ‘dogging out’, but a number of cases were provided. For example, by Mr W.S. born 1899, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, who worked as an insurance collector in Greengate during the interwar period.

54 Interview with Mrs A.M.

55 Greenwood, W., Love on the dole (Hammondsworth, 1969 edn), p. 24Google Scholar. The novel was first published in 1933.

56 Ibid. p. 189.

57 Ibid. p. 110.

58 This was confirmed by Bowen, William, Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 312Google Scholar.

59 Toole, J., Fighting through life (London, 1935), p. 55Google Scholar.

60 Interview with Mr J.S. M.S.T.C. 488.

61 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 311.

62 Interview with Mr B.B. born 1913, Ordsall; and Mrs G.R. born 1918, Ordsall.

63 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 736.

64 Interview with Mr C.W. The title ‘the biggest bookmaker in Salford’ was given in an interview by the bookmaker's nephew: Interview with Mr B.B. The label was confirmed by a number of respondents. For example, interview with Mr C.P. ‘Byrne’ is a pseudonym, in common with other surnames contained in extracts from oral testimony.

65 Interviews with Mr B.R. and Mrs. G.R. Some bookmakers treated children on a regular basis: ‘If the bookie had a good day, he used to give us coppers, at night time, before he went home. He always treated us.…’ Interview with Mrs M.J. born 1895, Ordsall.

66 Manchester Guardian, 8. Jan. 1936.

67 Roberts, , Classic slum, p. 37Google Scholar.

68 None of the Salford respondents who took part in street gaming mentioned attempts to bribe the police by the members of gambling schools, but Arthur Harding stated that he organized crown and anchor schools at markets in London, paying ‘rent’ in the form of bribes to the local police, Samuel, , East End underworld, p. 176Google Scholar.

69 Crofts were open spaces of waste ground in the heavily populated districts of the city.

70 Interview with Mr L.P.

71 Ibid. For example, one Salford detective was christened ‘Handbag’, because of his habit of talking to women in the street, and another ‘Sky High’, due to his tendency to gaze skywards as he walked.

72 Interview with Mr H.S.

73 A number of respondents were keen participants in the schools, but were never arrested. For example: interview with Mr G.O.

74 Interview with Mrs A.M.

75 Salford City Reporter, 15 May 1920.

76 Interview with Mr. C.P.

77 Salford City Reporter, 24 July 1920; M.S.T.C. 514: Interview with Mr H. born 1907, Ordsall.

78 Other areas well-known for gambling schools included Hanky Park and Whit Lane.

79 Interview with Mr C.W. ‘Ragging up’ in miner's dress was necessary to penetrate the schools. ‘Pitching up to the mott’ refers to pitch and toss.

80 Interview with Mr A.P. born 1904, Ordsall. Similar accounts were given by Mr H.S. and Mr B.R.; and in M.S.T.C. 514. The use of furniture vans as decoys was also described in an article on the career of Inspector Gibson, F. of the Salford City Police, Salford City Reporter, 14 04 1938Google Scholar. Jerry White found that in Campbell Bunk, the adoption of disguises in raids upon street bookmakers sometimes prompted rough treatment of the police, ‘Police an d people in London’, p. 38.

81 The tables are incomplete because there are only partial sets of Chief Constable's Reports for this period available in Manchester Central Library and Salford Local History Library.

82 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, p. 54.

83 In Salford, criticism of the police for their apparent readiness to arrest ‘jockeys’ rather than bookmakers led to more determined police raids against betting pitches by the 1930s. Street gaming never attracted the controversy which surrounded betting, as allegations of police corruption invariably centred upon the relationship between the police and bookmakers.

84 Interview with Mr L.P.

85 On Greengate: Interview with Mrs B.D. born 1925, Greengate. On the Adelphi: Interview with Mr A.A. born 1914, Adelphi. On Ordsall: Interview with Mrs K.E. born 1923, Ardwick, Manchester. Moved to Ordsall in 1934. On Hanky Park: Interview with Mr A.J. born 1930, Whit Lane. It is clear from oral evidence that street gaming remained an important component of working-class leisure, even if participation declined after 1930.

86 Interview with Mr L.A. born 1907, Grimsby. Moved to Ordsall around 1914.

87 Sunday afternoon gambling schools attracted what one respondent termed ‘congregations’ of spectators. Interview with Mr F.W. born 1911, Hanky Park.

88 Interview with Mr G.O. ‘Rings’ refers to a game involving throwing rings at hooks on a wall.

89 Russell, C. E. B. and Champagnac, E. T., ‘Gambling and aids to gambling’, Economic Review, X (1900), 485Google Scholar.

90 Interviews with Mr A.A. and Mr B.R. on the Adelphi and Ordsall districts.

91 Interviews with Mr C.W. and Mr A.J.

92 Interviews with Mrs E.H. born 1904, Bolton, and Mr H.S. The Pendleton Homing Society organized two pools, with stakes of Id and 3d, and 6d and a shilling, as prizes in a race from Mangotsfied, a distance of 140 miles, in June 1938. Salford City Reporter, 3 June 1938.

93 This view was shared by contributors to the social surveys of London and Merseyside during the 1930s, McKibbin, , ‘Working class gambling’, p. 150Google Scholar.

94 Hilton, , Why I go in for the pools, p. 23Google Scholar.

95 This was the view of Robert Peacock, Chief Constable of Manchester, Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Betting, 1902, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 211. Similarly, oral evidence suggests that during the interwar period, most of the interest in horse racing in Salford was confined to the back streets of the city.

96 Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 4441.

97 Evidence of the chief constable of Manchester, Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 732. The emergence of the greyhound tracks gave rise to a new hierarchy amon g bookmakers, as only the less affluent back entry bookmakers turned to the greyhound courses as a means of supplementing their incomes: interview with Mr B.B.

98 Jones, , Crime, protest, community and police, p. 104Google Scholar.

99 When legal, cockfights had been held annually during Whit Week at the Salford cockpit in Greengate. According to local historians, the sport drew nobility to Salford, and the pit's leading patron during the late eighteenth century was the twelfth earl of Derby, Hampson, C., Salford through the ages (Salford, 1930), p. 203Google Scholar; Slugg, J., Reminiscences of Manchester fifty years ago (Manchester, 1881), p. 310Google Scholar.

100 Interview with Mr R. born 1915, Patricroft; and Mrs R. born 1917, Swinton.

101 Only one other respondent referred to cockfighting in Salford, claiming that miners took fighting cocks to the Brindleheath railway sidings, which was an established venue for gambling schools. Interview with Mr J.P. born 1910, Lower Broughton. Cockfighting in Liverpool during the interwar period is described in Forrester, H., Twopence to cross the Mersey (London, 1974), pp. 136–7Google Scholar.

102 This phrase was used by Robert Storch to describe the role of the police in enforcing attacks upon popular forms of behaviour demanded by nineteenth-century legislation in his analysis of ‘The policeman as domestic missionary: urban discipline and popular culture in Northern England, 1840–57, Journal of Social History, IX (1976), 481–509Google Scholar.

103 White, The worst street in North London.

104 For example, a report in the Salford City Reporter of 15 May 1920 listed 25 men convicted for taking part in a street gambling school. The offenders' ages ranged from 16 to 48.

105 Interview with Mrs E.H.

106 Heaton, Richard described dinner hour card schools held in a foundry where he worked as an apprentice, Salford, pp. 11–12Google Scholar.

107 Interview with Mr C.P. ‘Penny capitalism’, small-scale entrepreneurial activity by manual workers and their families, is discussed by Benson, J., The penny capitalists: a study of nineteenth-century working-class entrepreneurs (Dublin, 1983)Google Scholar.

108 Liverpool Council of Voluntary Aid, Report on betting in Liverpool, p. 7. The survey claimed that fifty per cent of the local women were habitual gamblers. Women's gambling in Salford is discussed below.

109 Evidence of the chief constable of Manchester, Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932–3, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 715. Walter Greenwood depicted communal wagers as part of the lifestyle of young apprentices in Park, Hanky, Love on the dole, p. 56Google Scholar.

110 Manchester University Settlement, Ancoats, p. 21.

111 Household budgeting arrangements are discussed in Roberts, E., A woman's place: an oral history of working-class women 1890–1940 (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar.

112 Interview with Mrs E.C. born 1916, Pendleton, Mrs. E.C. was interviewed as part of the present study, but this extract comes from an earlier interview by Alison Dickens of Ordsall Community Arts, and I am grateful for her permission to use this material.

113 J. Hogge, ‘Gambling among women’, in Rowntree, Betting and gambling.

114 Russell, C. E. B., Social problems of the north (London, 1914), pp. 109–16Google Scholar.

115 Interview with Mr B.R.

116 Green, , Betting and gambling, p. 37Google Scholar.

117 Cobley, W., ‘The ethics of sport’, ‘Odds and Ends’, LXXIII (1933), 291Google Scholar, manuscript magazine held in the archives department of Manchester Central Library.

118 Report from the Select Committee on Betting Duty, 1323, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 6860. Many respondents recalled taking thri'penny bets to bookmakers. For example: Interview with Mrs N.P. born 192:, Seedley.

119 McKibbin, , ‘Working class gambling’, p. 156Google Scholar.

120 Interview with Mrs E.H. born 1904, Bolton.

121 Toole, , Fighting through life, p. 56Google Scholar.

122 Foley, A., A Bolton childhood (Manchester, 1973), p. 17Google Scholar.

123 Interview with Mrs. E. C. Russell also provided cases where excessive betting wrecked a family's domestic life, including an instance of a Salford mother of six who he claimed had pawned almost all the furniture in the house to raise money for her wagers. Social problems of the north, p. 114. It was rare for women to behave in this fashion, and only one respondent provided a comparable case: Interview with Mr C.P.

124 Salford City Reporter, 25 Dec. 1920.

125 Interview with Mrs N.P.

126 McKibbin, , ‘Working class gambling’, pp. 155–7Google Scholar.

127 Salford City Reporter, 6 Jan. 1939, 28 Apr. 1939.

128 Heaton, , Salford, p. 12Google Scholar.

129 Many of the newly-opened licensed betting shops in the city changed hands during the 1960s, as individual businesses were bought out by chains. Interview with Mr B.B.

130 Manchester City News, 30 June 1906.

131 Russell, and Campagnac, , ‘Gambling and aids to gambling’, p. 482Google Scholar.

132 Booth, C., The life and labour of the people in London: notes upon social influences and conclusion (London, 1902), p. 141Google Scholar.