My illicit errands to the bookie's (From The Westmorland Gazette)

My illicit errands to the bookie's

12:40pm Saturday 21st January 2012 in Nostalgia

Malcolm Wheatman, aged 80, of Kendal, recalls an unusual activity he was asked to do when he left his errand boy job at Farrer’s Tea Room and got his first full-time job at a local printers, Bateman and Hewitson, in the 1940s.

With a real adult job I soon discovered that my errand-boy days were far from over.

I remember watching one or other of my colleagues fill a mysterious slip of paper with strange number combinations and even stranger names and then finish by signing the paper with a name that was plainly not their own. How mysterious what that?

They then carefully wrapped coins in the paper and then they passed it to me. I had to be careful not to let anyone see what I had in my hand.

I then took it to a little cubby-hole behind a small door at the top of the New Shambles where I mistakenly thought, as I was in the print trade, some kind of bookbinding went on. There were many chuckles from the men inside at this as they took the paper and the money.

I later discovered that the place was run by, not a bookbinder, but a bookmaker, commonly referred to as a ‘bookie’.

Such was the illegal procedure of betting on horses in those days. I did notice that I never had to go and collect money going in the opposite direction.

Another aspect of unlawful pursuits was during the lunch hour when the men would occasionally play a game I thought similar to those played by boys in the school playground.

It seemed to consist of tossing a couple of pennies in the air and forecasting how they would drop.

I once had to keep watch at the end of the yard in case I saw a policeman approaching. I remember the alarm on the men’s faces at the prospect of being discovered by The Law.