A TOTALISATOR MYSTERY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1040, 1 February 1911, Page 4

A TOTALISATOR MYSTERY.

AND'WHAT IT LED TO. . . . (By Telegraph—Press Association.) : / . Christchurch, January 31. A good deal of curiosity was expressed yesterday, when. Mr. J. M'Dougall, who has charge of the totalisator at trotting meetings in Canterbury, invited investors on i'iecework, who von the iiportsmens' Handicap at the New Zealand Metropolitan Trotting Club's meeting on Saturday, paying a substantial dividend, to meet him at his office. They were a -mere handful, but they came- in from the highways and hedges, and at his request signed their namesijto a statement that they had backed the horse,' and indicated the windows at which their tickets had been purchased. The mystery was not fathomed for them at the moment, and the popular opinion was that the totalisator had naiil out too much, money, and was anxious to como into its own again. The totalisator is, of course, generally supposed to be a mechanical embodiment of that wellloved supposition that "figures cannot lie," but it lied very badly on Saturday, through an accident that was Quito unforeseeable, and that cannot in any way reflect upon its integrity. The blocks of totalisator tickets are numbered from the figure 0 in sequence, with the result that when the totalisator clerk has sold 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, his block shows that 5, which is the' next ticket, is the number of tickets that has been disposed of. Unfortunately, in the caso of Piecework, the block of tickets had come from the printer in a faulty condition—the numbers sto U inclusive were missing, and when tho club officials camo to check the figures the block showed 15 as its top number,, indicating that 15 tickets had been sold, instead of 5. The dividend was worked out on this basis, and it was only when the totalisator proprietors discovered that their cash was .£237 over that the mistake was discovered. 'Fortunately the investors wero singularly few, and could be easily identified by the clerks who had paid out the short dividend. Mr. M'Dougall has now accounted for tho whole of the investors, who are to bo paid the additional money to-morrow, alter signinjr the necessary .declaration. The mistake was first traced by tha Fact that the holder of the block of tickets that was ten 10s. tickets short in his cash, and, in accordance with the rules of tho totalisator. had to pay (he £5 from his own pocket to make his cash balance. It is intended in future to have the blocks more systematically checked, in order that there may be no repitition of an incident that was quite imforsopii and tlwt was not blameable to the totalisator oHioals. The dividend which was very substantial as it originally stood, lijis.uow been increased by over 50 per cent.