When only seventeen he made the acquaintance of a bookmaker who would continue business with him in spite of his father’s remonstrances. The judge commented on the fact that it was this same bookmaker whom he had now cheated, and by whom he was prosecuted and got twelve months’ hard labour. The next is a dispenser who embezzled £11 from the doctor who employed him. His downfall was accounted for by betting, and his solicitor offered to give the names of the bookmakers with whom he had been betting, in consequence of whose threats of exposure he had stolen to pay them. Another clerk embezzled £1. In his absence from the office the manager’s suspicions were aroused by a street loafer bringing a betting account for the clerk showing a large amount owing. He lost fifteen years’ good character, and got three months’ hard labour. And next comes a postman who, in the words of the Recorder, “had been engaged in a systematic robbery of the public service in order to engage in transactions on the Turf.” He got six months, but in my time would almost certainly have had five years’ penal servitude, as such offences on the part of postal officials were dealt with then with uniform severity. Had one to labour the point, a press-cutting agency would enable one to fill pages with typical cases arising in any week, especially during what is called the flat-racing season, when, as a friend of mine engaged on a London evening paper tells me, the circulation was found on inquiry to increase by 50,000 per diem from the time of the Lincoln Handicap. The Lords’ Committee were told by Sir A. de Rutzen, after twenty-five years’ experience of the crime of London, that “more mischief was brought about by betting than by almost any other cause, especially street betting, which could very well be put down.... From personal knowledge, he could say that the evil arising from betting was as deep-seated as it was possible to be. In cases were persons were prosecuted for embezzlement and betting was mentioned as the cause, he was in the habit of making inquiries, which invariably confirmed the statements.” Another Metropolitan magistrate deplored that he entirely concurred with what Sir Albert had said, and added that where the crime had been one of fraud or embezzlement he had invariably found that betting had been at the bottom of it. Bankruptcy may be a misfortune, but is very frequently a social crime, and on this I would only refer to the evidence given before the Lords by Mr. Luke Sharp, Official Receiver for Birmingham, as to betting as a cause of bankruptcy, and would remark that, carrying my mind back over a series of years, I cannot remember a case of the bankruptcy of a trader known personally to me in which either drink or betting, and commonly both conjoined, was not the cause, although either or both were often unsuspected until the crash came.