THE BETTING EVIL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 66, 27 June 1910, Page 5

THE BETTING EVIL.

CONDEMNATION OF BOOKMAKERS. By Telegraph —Preas Association. Auckland, Saturday. Among. the prisoners before the Supreme Court for sentence this morning were George Bater and Sydney Saunders, charged with the theft of large sums of money from their employers, Saarland and Co. and Tonson, Garlick and Co. Justice Chapman said Bater's extremely heavy defalcations were the result of the wilful decision to enter upon a course of heavy betting with bookmakers. For ia long time the totalisator had been familiar as a public gambling appliance. •His own 'personal opinion was that it ought not to exist, but his opinion was by no means shared by the bulk 'of the community, and the totalisator had the merit of openness in its transactions, "but the law that I compflain of," continued the Judge, "and I consider, it my duty as Judge to openly complain of, is that which legalises the operation of a section who come very jear to the criminal class. Bookmakers may be honorable men. I have been assured that many bookmakers are honorable, but as a class they are treated by civilised communities as persons without lawful means of support. The New Zealand Parliament has seen fit to erect them into a legalised class and legitimate calling. I think that is one of the gravest mistakes the Legislature of the Dominion has made." Hi.s Honor urged that the sooner the whole subject was reconsidered the better in the interest of morality and honesty. He believed he was speaking in accord with the views held by every Judge and Magistrate of the country and police officers and others administering the criminal laws, when he declared that the result of the law in question was the direct encouragement of the criminal class, making criminals of young men normally not criminal. Bater had misappropriated the enormous sum of £3500 in fifteen months. In Saunders' case the defalcations were not nearly as great, but there was no ground for treating the offences differently. Sentences of four years' hard labor were imposed on each prisoner.