Whether one agrees or not with Lord Beaconsfield’s uncompromising condemnation of the Turf as a vast engine of national demoralisation, it is impossible to deny that the racing world provides an exceptionally fertile field for the practice of fraud and trickery that is akin to fraud. Nowhere else do knaves prey upon fools so easily, so safely, and so profitably. Take first the case of the tipsters. It is well within the mark to say that nine-tenths of these gentry live by lying. If they did not tell lies they could not sell their tips. Many of them circulate absolutely fictitious lists of winners that they have found, and practically all of them make pretences as to the sources of their information and the infallibility of their prophecies that they know to be false. If their judgment or prevision enabled them to foresee the results of races with the consistency that they claim, it stands to reason that they would not be offering to sell tips to all and sundry when, however small their capital at starting, they might be piling up a fortune by backing horses for themselves. But this obvious consideration never crosses the mind of the gullish herd of backers. No story of his successes that a tipster puts forward is too steep for them, and as fast as one lot of dupes is disillusioned he gets another. The following is a list of some of the false prophets of the Turf whom I have pilloried during the past twelve months:— E. W. BESTON, Birmingham.—During the flat-racing season, which is also the principal flat-catching season, this individual issues a weekly paper called the _Midland Referee_, nominally priced at sixpence, but sent out gratuitously, in which vituperative attacks upon rival tipsters are mingled with extravagant puffs of “Dan Bruce,” “Miss Flossie Beresford,” “Percy Macdonald,” “James Brown,” “Reginald Vernon,” “Walter Hooley,” “George Leslie,” “George Graham,” “E. Allsopp,” “Hugh Owen,” “George Westwood,” etc. All these are aliases under which Beston himself carries on business as a tipster from a number of accommodation addresses in Birmingham and the neighbourhood. He bamboozles people into buying his tips not only through the medium of the _Midland Referee_, but by means of advertisements in his various aliases in many English and Irish newspapers, and by extensive distribution of circulars through the post. Not long since I gave a case in which a greenhorn paid Beston as “Flossie Beresford” £3 for twenty sixpenny telegrams containing forty predictions, of which only four came off! It is unnecessary to cite examples of the unblushing mendacity of this Protean rascal, or to describe in detail the artful dodges that he practises, but one ramp that he carried out last October is worthy of notice. Besides the _Midland Referee_, Beston publishes the _Winning Guide_ and other rags which he represents as sporting journals.