Old-fashioned race-course welshing is, I believe, not quite so prevalent as it used to be. The up-to-date welsher adopts a less hazardous plan of campaign. Instead of running the gauntlet of an angry mob on the race-course, he does his swindling more sedately in an office, where he is out of the reach of his victims. Calling himself a commission agent or a Turf accountant, he advertises in the Press or sends out circulars inviting backers to open accounts with him. When they lose he takes their money; when they win he refuses to pay up. I cannot say that I have any sympathy for the greenhorns who are plundered by these bandits of the Turf. There are plenty of bookmakers who carry on their business in a perfectly honest and straightforward manner. But a man is not necessarily one of this class because he sends out a speciously-worded circular from an office in the West End or elsewhere; and if people will be so stupid as to open betting accounts on the strength of such circulars, knowing nothing of the party with whom they are dealing beyond what he has himself told them, it seems to me that they need the lesson they are pretty certain to receive. The following are circularising betting agents who have come under my notice during the past year:— JOHN FENWICK AND CO., 167 Piccadilly.—A defaulter. G. H. CHARDSON, 25 Wellington Street, Strand.—A defaulter. CHARLES KITTELL, 21 Copthall Avenue, E.C.—A defaulter. FLOYD MCDERMOTT AND SCOTT, 58 Gillett Row, Thornton Heath.—Defaulters. S. RUSSELL.—A welsher whose address is frequently changed. Describes himself in his circulars as “member of Tattersall’s Ring.” GEORGE SILKE, 3 James Street, Haymarket.—A defaulter. Represents himself as a member of Tattersall’s, which is untrue. “MALLARD AND CO.” and “GEORGE SHAW,” 10 Dawes Street, S.W.—Names used by a swindler whose only known address is a small shop where letters are taken in for him. EDGAR AND CO., 24 Trevor Square, Knightsbridge.—Sharps whose impudent method of “doing” a customer out of a considerable sum of money I exposed last October. HARRY WILLIAMS, Piccadilly Circus Mansions, 67a Shaftesbury Avenue, W.—Upon being asked to pay an account a week after the settling day, Williams refused to pay at all, on the ground that an application for the money was an “impertinence.” ALEC A. HARRIS AND CO., Agra, Gresham Road, Staines.—This is seemingly an alias chosen to induce incautious backers to believe that they are dealing with Alex. Harris, a well-known and highly-respected bookmaker. Needless to say, Mr. Alex. Harris is not in any way connected with this shady starting-price office at Staines. C. B. RAE, 12 Duke Street, S.W.—Before he blossomed forth as a touting bookmaker this individual, whose real name is Sydney Reed, practised as a solicitor and was implicated in a cruel fraud.