BOOKMAKER’S ‘FORT”

Opotiki News, Volume I, Issue 62, 27 July 1938, Page 4

BOOKMAKER’S ‘FORT”

BARRED WIRE " ERECTED SYSTEM OF TRENCHES LONDON, April 20.—A bookmaker fined at ’Wolverhampton to-day was said by the police to have done his business in a place like a fortress, with barbed-wire entanglements -and a labyrinth of trenches. Detective Constable Milligan said he iiid near a hedge and saw the man,, Thomas Ernest Eggington, aged 27, outside a wooden gate, taking betting slips through a gap in a fence 7ft high with barbed-wire on top. • His wife Doris, aged' 22, was walking up and down a; passage, keeping watch. She shouted: “Look out. the cops arc here”, when the place was raided. It was stated: that observation had been kept on the “fortress” for two months, and special photographs had been taken of it. One attempt to approach in a haycart failed. When a pressman went to see it tonight watchdogs barked warning and heavy , oak doors, bolted and padlocked, barred two of the three entrances. The thick, high fences and walls, topped with knotted barbed wire, enclosed a “V’Vslinped enclosure providing a good view of approaching strangers. ,