success as an out-door betting-man had its
drawbacks, and as if in the duties involved in that
high position, there lurked corresponding cares.
Blight and Lovenote is also a firm in which
unlimited confidence may be placed, and I show
my faith in this testimony to character by
modestly putting half-a-crown upon the favourite
of the day. Neither the name of the people I
bet with, nor that of the horse I back, nor the
sum I pay, nor the sum I am to receive if he
wins—he made what the sporting papers
subsequently called "a bad fifth"—are given on the
ticket I received from Blight. "Four half-crowns
—Favourite, Jem," to the clerk, and the pleasant
clink made by my half-crown, as it joins the
half-crowns of other investors, in the
capacious pocket of the firm, is the only evidence
afforded me of my contingent rights. So when
another respectable list-keeper is pointed out to
me—my companions select the honest men out
of the crowd, and show them as curiosities,
much as a gardener would point out a singular
case of grafting, or a rare exotic which had been
transplanted without injury—I am checked in
my desire to give him money by the candid
words: "I can't afford to lay a fair price, for my
book is full." As this man pays when he loses,
he makes calculations as to the state of his book.
Not so the ordinary run of list-keepers here.
The proverb as to all being fish that comes to
net, is rigidly acted up to, and the terms they
offer are not unfrequently threefold the market
price. Above their lists are printed a name
generally assumed, and an address almost always
fictitious. Round them, besides their clerk or
partner, stand a little group of associates, who
make sham bets, or who volunteer false information
with genial readiness. That man in the loose
claret paletot, and the large glass-headed pin in
his shabby stock, has been known to the police
for the last twenty years as living "by besting
people." "Besting," I learn, is a playful term
tor gaining an unfair advantage, and applies
equally to the three-card trick, to skittle-sharping,
to fraudulent tossing, and to larceny. That
bullet-headed ruffian who is truculently shouting
out the large odds he'll give, is a convicted thief,
and the short bristly hair you see fringing the
back of his fleshy neck, was last trimmed and cut,
in the prison he has just left. The Jew whom
we afterwards see greedily calling for hot pork
sausages at the tavern round the corner, as if to
realise that combined "gust of eating and pleasure
of sinning" craved after by Boswell's friend,
and whose name is familiar to every reader of
police reports, was a night-house keeper near the
Haymarket, until the bill for the early-closing of
refreshment-houses was passed. He winks knowingly
to his fellows as we come near his stand,
and with mock earnestness solicits us to put "a
trifle on." "Who are the other list-keepers?"
repeat my friends the detectives. "Cross-men,
every one of 'em." By cross-men, meaning men
on the cross, men, in fact, who'd rob you if they
could. "There's a man now"—indicating, with
a quiver of the eyelid, a bull-necked muscular
scamp in a fragged coat two sizes too small for
him—"there's a man who'd garotte you the very
minute you gave him a chance. That fellow
next him has been in prison three times to my
knowledge, and the big man booking that young
butcher's half-crown, used to keep a gambling-house
and take a table round to the races." A
retired publican, who's lost all his money; a
cab-owner, who's been through the court; a
broken-down gentleman's servant, who's lost his
character and can't get another place; a clerk
in the City who was up for embezzlement, but
wasn't convicted; these were the descriptions
given of some of the list-keepers, whose
comparatively decent look made me ask their history.

But the preponderating scum was of a much
less reputable character, and a large majority of
the workpeople, shopboys, small tradesmen, and
country people who either in person or by deputy
invested their small sums, placed them in the
hands of men whose calling has been to batten
upon the public from their youth up. "Is Sir
Richard a-goin' to move us from here next?"
asked a pock-marked vagabond in a long drab
coat. "I hope not," was dryly given in reply,
and the emphasis was so marked that the
question, " Vy so?—vot difference would it
make to you?" naturally followed. "We should
be troubled with so many burglary cases," was
quietly answered; whereupon drab-coat leered
and grinned as if to return thanks for the
compliment paid to the predatory instincts of
himself and friends. The experience was unvaried
during our stay. A stooping, slouching fellow,
with a battered ugly face, was pointed out as an
ex-champion in the prize-ring, who had since
taken to betting, and who now kept a list "on.
the square;" and we chatted with three old
women like modern witches, with stout cotton,
umbrellas for familiars, who are to be seen here
daily, and who back horses and talk on "merits"
and "performances" and pedigrees with a full
mastery of stable slang. "The brewery people
ain't likely to interfere," I learnt, "because these
betting fellows spend their time and their money
in public-houses, and it's good for trade," and
as long as the foul sore their presence implies,
keeps in its present locality, it may perhaps be
permitted to fester on with impunity. One
thing is worth remarking. After an hour or
two's sojourn, we adjourned to converse on the
characters and antecedents of some of the men
we had just left. On our return, neither the
convicted "Welsher" nor his stand could be
seen. "There's been a little fuss up yonder,
and they've bonneted a cove as wouldn't pay!"
was the information vouchsafed to us, and we
failed to learn anything more specific. Plenty of
eager informants to tell us there had been a row,
but none of these would confess to having
witnessed it, or that they knew its precise nature.
Whether the injured farmer had hired hangers-on
to pay those punching compliments to his
debtor, which had been so freely promised to
the farmer himself; whether he had taken the
law into his own hands and boldly fought it out;
or whether, out of deference to the presence of
my friends, a council of war had been held in our