Read Illinois Lottery Background

Tabs Vs. Bookmakers

At Illinois lottery Wowsers were unwilling to accept the new gambling regime without a fight. Unlike their predecessors, they based their protestations on social rather than moral concerns, in particular complaining bitterly about the establishment of TAB agencies in suburban areas close to shops and schools. They received support from some local businessmen who were refusing credit to customers known to be ''over-patronizing'' local Tabs. New leader of the Opposition, Walter Nash, reminded the government that the law was intended to suppress the bookmaker, not extend facilities for gambling. Fearing a backlash, Internal Affairs Minister William Bodkin, himself instinctively opposed to gambling, urged the TAB to establish its agencies away from other businesses, churches and schools in stand-alone premises with separate entrances, no outside seats, no radios playing, and no minors on the premises and subject to regular police inspection.
The National government was treating the Board as something of an errant child, and from late in 1952 discreetly exercised more control over it. Slowly the Board bent to its will, and partly as a result Bodkin felt able to boast at the 1953 National Party conference that his government had reduced the country’s gambling bill by ''many millions of pounds''. His claim was nonsensical because race-meetings were as popular as ever, and despite restrictions placed on the location of Tabs, their growth continued to be phenomenal. In 1954 the Board’s profit was nearly 30 times what it had been only two years previously. In 1961 its record net profit of £900,000 made it the fifth most profitable capitalist enterprise in the country.

Bookmakers Betting

Bodkin also claimed that bookmakers were a dying breed. In March 1951 he promised a grim fight. ''We’ll get them all right-prison sentences will do it.'' But he would be sadly disappointed. Despite the Tabs'' successes, and intensified police operations against bookmakers, illegal off-course betting continued, albeit more cautiously in the light of the renewed police determination. When, for example, retired hairdresser James Phillips was arrested in November 1955, he was turning over more than £1,000 each race-day from 60 clients and twelve agents. The legislation had left niche markets which bookmakers filled admirably: betting on credit, small bets (as low as 2S 6d) and late betting-bookmakers accepted bets right up to when the horses lined up and paid out the elements of fund like dividends and were announced. Some bookmakers proudly declared their earnings and paid tax on them, and assisted each other when faced with police persecution.
Nevertheless, a number of full-time lottery bookmakers did ''retire'' as Tabs flourished and police vigilance increased. In 1953 special gaming squads were established with roving commissions to arrest as many bookmakers as they could ferret out. Magistrates, aided by new legislation that made prison mandatory for a second bookmaking offence, fined them more heavily and jailed them more frequently. Moreover, the success of the new betting agencies impacted dramatically on bookmakers'' profits. The glory days of the late 1940S were gone forever. The remaining bookies dug in further, changing residences at short intervals, employing minders and restricting business to acquaintances. The largest operators worked behind locked doors, doing business only with outside agents by telephone.