BOOKMAKING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3619, 29 March 1927, Page 3

BOOKMAKING.

FINE OF £llO IMPOSED,

Wellington Yesterday. Eleven charges of betting at totalisator odds were preferred against John Martindale (aged 50), in the Magistrate’s Court on Saturday. Accused pleaded guilty. Chief-Detective Ward .stated that accused was a member of the firm of Scott and Martindale, wealthy bookmakers, of Wellington, who had been carrying on the business for years. Martindale was regarded as the outside man, who went round hotels and agents collecting the bets. He worked a lot in the bar of the Commercial Hotel, where so much betting occurred on some days that the bar was like a reading room with the number of double charts and day cards lying about. When arrested, accused had on his person a settling hook, sixty-eight double charts, and other betting material. “It is frqeuently said,” added the Chief Detective,, “that the big bookmakers are never brought before the Court, and that the prosecutions are always against the small men. But here is a big man this time—one of the biggest in New Zealand.” Mr. Treadwell said it was untrue that his client was a member of a firm of wealthy bookmakers. The facts were that after serving five years in the Great War he returned with his nerves so shattered that he had boon unable to work. Accused had never been convicted before at breaking the law. “If it. wero true, as the Chief Detective says, that he lias had this long career as a bookmaker,” said Mr. Treadwell, “I would live thought that he would have been brought before the Court long before this and charged with souk* of th£ offences which could have been laid against him.” Chief-Detective Ward stated that accused was tried by the Supreme Court on a charge of bookmaking in 1921. when he was acquitted. The Magistrate (Mr. J. H. Salmon) said he proposed to deal with accused on the basis of a first offender, though it was evident from the amounts involved in the betting transactions that his hookmaking operations must have been on a. large scale. He inflicted a fine of £l.O on each charge, in default one month’s imprisonment.