Chaos king in first betting shops Little security - no cash controls


by Angus Dalrymple


even one shop. All he saw was the chance to get small betting shop owners to open hedging accounts with him. As if to prove he posed no threat to the little people, he actually used these reassuring words in his trade advertisements: “We are not in competition with you.” With this year on the run-in and close to home, modern bookmakers may fancy a glimpse of the madness that prevailed back then and fancy a tip on how to boost business now.


ANGUS DALRYMPLE began his career in the bookmaking business during the Second World War. He was later billed as “Gus”


Day One I was running London’s biggest betting shop in what was actually a poor location, Jack Swift’s gambling emporium at Dover Street and Piccadilly. I’ll tell you why our “pitch”


Dalrymple in “The Sporting Life” from 1962 to 1966 and again in 1972 when he wrote about betting shops and racing personalities. He now writes for CBC-TV News in Toronto.


NO ONE knew what would happen. Not even the big boys. Especially not them. Hills, Corals and Ladbrokes all lost big when legal off- course cash betting burst on Britain 50 years ago. Today’s “Big Three” couldn’t see the new shops clicking and wouldn’t take a chance; they were like show business producers without the faintest idea the curtain was going up on a hit. Joe Coral looked at Ireland’s


shops, where they’d been legal for years, and found the premises so depressing and trade so slow he said they reminded him of funeral parlours.


was no good in a moment. Incidentally, I saw an article the other day where a writer says he “vividly” recalls that momentous first day climbing the “rickety wooden stairs” to Jack Swift’s place. Now we all knew Swift


My credentials? From


was a rough diamond. But he was also pernickety, with a penchant for personally dusting the ceiling from atop a step-ladder; he did it because he fancifully claimed the tiniest specks gave him neuralgia. He’d also tear out what was left of his hair if any of us missed seeing words blacked- out on his neon sign outside. It ran the length of the building and around the corner. He’d scream if even the dot over the “i” in his name wasn’t lit. So I can assure the writer with the vivid memory that far from being “rickety” and “wooden”, Swift’s carpeted marble stairway had elegant wrought-iron banisters and gleaming walls, all of them freshly or recently dusted. Because our premises


Max Stein, the elderly head of Ladbrokes, described betting shops with the typical succinctness of a bookmaker: “I’ll lay odds they’re just a flash in the pan.” And from the outset,


William Hill didn’t have the slightest interest in owning


weren’t directly on the street we should never have caught on. What good is a betting shop up a long flight of stairs? But from the start, we had two gimmicks going for us that made shoals of punters walk up.


The first was the way we 14 November/December 2011 BOS Magazine


Jack Swift


circumvented the Betting and Gaming Act. It prohibited the advertising of betting shops, but I hit on a way around that a few days before we opened. I put an ad on the racing page of the Evening Standard and in the Sporting Life. It didn’t mention the banned words “licensed betting office” of course, but it did show a cash-register ringing up “No Limit” next to the headline “Cash in at Swift’s, 1 Dover Street, Piccadilly.” The editor of the “Life”


Picture: Supplied


and priceless. We were home free.


Our second inspiration came when we began offering current course odds as well as S.P. The idea came to me when I was compiling Swift’s first betting shop rule-book. It proved a hit from the


was livid when he realised I’d pulled a fast one. He berated his advertisement staff for accepting an illegal ad and told them never to run it again. Too late. The “damage”, as


start. As soon as I began calling out “Take a price” it galvanized the place. And when I started offering punters slightly more than the odds relayed by the Exchange Telegraph on our loudspeakers, people were electrified and actually lining up to bet.


he saw it, was done. And on that crucial first day we drew a mob and even got a bonus: a BBC television reporter and camera crew. As the first race was run it was a case of “Lights – They’re Off – Action!” Jack Swift of Dover Street made the news that same night. The publicity was legal


it, I pointed out he didn’t mind paying up to two shillings in the pound (10 per cent) commission to his trade clients, so why not give a little extra to cash customers? Besides, I said, odds fluctuate and punters often find they’ve taken LESS than the S.P. Now that’s the tip I mentioned earlier about boosting trade today. But although I say it myself, you


Please mention BOS Magazine when replying to advertisements When Swift grumbled about


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