Gambling and Problem Gambling in Britain

Bob Erens, Laura Mitchell, Jim Orford, Kerry Sproston, Clarissa White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135479442
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

Despite a rapid increase in the availability of many forms of gambling, there has been little serious study in the literature of the likely effects. This book seeks to fill that gap by reviewing what is known about gambling in Britain and studying work on the nature, prevalence and possible causes of problem gambling.
Drawing on the history and recent British studies on the subject, Gambling and Problem Gambling in Britain gives an in-depth theoretical and practical viewpoint of this subject. Areas covered include:
* gambling in Britain since Victorian times
* expansion of gambling in the late twentieth century
* what we now know about problem gambling and its treatment
* a consideration of the future of gambling in Britain.
This book will be invaluable for professionals, trainees and academics in the areas of counselling, primary care, probation and social work.

Chapter 1

Gambling in Britain since Victorian times

Knowing where you have come from nearly always helps one understand present predicaments and disputes, and that is certainly true of gambling and the British. A bit of recent history is illuminating. The present chapter considers gambling in Britain principally from around late Victorian times to the 1980s. Chapter 2 takes up the story from then on.

This chapter draws heavily upon two books that have become standard works on the subject: Dixon’s (1991) From Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking, Anti-Gambling, and the Law, and Clapson’s (1992) A Bit of a Flutter: Popular Gambling and English Society, c.1823–1961. The former is particularly strong on changing attitudes to gambling, legislative changes, and the role of the British government. The latter is especially helpful in providing details of different forms of gambling, including some, such as betting on dog racing or private betting, which are often neglected in more general discussions of gambling. Chinn’s (1991) book on working-class betting and the rise of bookmaking was also very useful, as were books by Brenner and Brenner (1990) and Reith (1999) which contain substantial historical sections, and a number of papers including one by Miers (1996).

The history of gambling in Britain over the last century is complex and fascinating, and if space allowed there are many facets that might be described and points that could be made. The historians seem to agree that the following conclusions can be drawn. First, gambling over that period has taken many different forms, which are constantly changing and developing. The second conclusion is that attitudes towards gambling are never neutral: there are at least two opposed views of gambling, one pro and the other anti, and collectively the nation’s views have always been ambivalent. The third is that forms of gambling, and criticisms of gambling, have always been strongly related to social class. Lastly, they concur that recent history has seen many attempts at the control of gambling, changing with time, and varying from prohibition to legalisation and regulation; attempts to prohibit forms of gambling have repeatedly been evaded by one means or another.

Forms of gambling: varied and changing over time

Gambling in one form or another has probably always gone on, but in the second half of the 17th century the Restoration appears to have been associated with a startling rise in gambling, referred to by Reith (1999, p.58) as an “explosion” which lasted for the next hundred years. Pepys in his diary of the 1660s (1976, Vol 9, p.4, cited by Reith) referred to gambling as a “prophane, mad entertainment”. Gambling took the form of private wagers on the outcome of all manner of events such as births, marriages and deaths, but particularly sporting events such as horse races, cock and dog fights, bear-baiting and prize fighting (Chinn, 1991; Reith, 1999). In 1754 The Connoisseur declared “there is nothing, however trivial or ridiculous, which is not capable of producing a bet” (cited by Reith, 1999, p.63). By the first half of the 19th century, with the effects of the industrial revolution, former patterns of both aristocratic and working-class recreation had declined. That period was strong on anti-gambling sentiment and saw legislation (in 1823), for example, that would outlaw lotteries for over a hundred years. It culminated in the Betting Act of 1853 which serves as a useful starting point for this brief historical review. That important Act made illegal the operating of any special ‘place’, such as a betting house, for purposes of off-course cash betting – legislation that was not overturned until 1960 when modern betting offices were legalised (Table 1.1 provides some key dates in 19th- and 20th-century British gambling legislation).

According to Chinn (1991), the later half of the 19th century, and particularly the 1880s, saw a marked resurgence of gambling. This he put down to several factors. Horse racing was by then much better organised and on a larger scale than before, and bookmakers, who had found plenty of ways of getting round the 1853 legislation, were more numerous, better organised and more to be trusted than previously. Sufficient working-class people now had some disposable income to spend on horse-race betting. Finally, the advent of the railways, expansion of the sporting press, and particularly the development of the telegraph, allowed people to enjoy a day out at the races, and meant that news of races, odds on the horses running, and results, could be quickly known all around the country (Chinn, 1991; Dixon, 1991; Reith, 1999). What is clear is that by the end of the 19th century, horse-race betting in Britain, which the anti-gambling sentiment and legislation of the century had strikingly failed to suppress, had become, both on-course and off it, the major form of the nation’s gambling (Clapson, 1992).

Although horse-race betting came to occupy a dominant position in British gambling, many other forms of gambling have coexisted with it, their popularity rising and falling with time. Gambling on coin games was also very popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian era. The game of ‘pitch-and-toss’ was, according to Clapson (1992), the most popular such game. It had been played at least since the 18th century and continued to be popular up to the period between the 20th century’s two world wars. The game was described to the 1844 Select Committee on Gaming by a London magistrate:

Table 1.1 Gambling legislation in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries: some key dates

1808	House of Commons Select Committee on the laws relating to Lotteries	Highly critical of public lotteries
1823	Lotteries Act	Lotteries made illegal
1844	House of Lords Select Committee on Gaming	Recommended stronger police action against gambling ‘hells’; and making gambling agreements unenforceable
1845	Gaming Act	Gaming debts unenforceable at law; resulted in bookmakers demanding cash from clients and a rapid growth of betting houses
1853	Betting Houses Act	Betting houses made illegal
1902	House of Lords Select Committee on Betting	Recommended legislating against street betting
1906	Street Betting Act	Acceptance of bets on streets and in other public places made illegal
1923	Select Committee on Betting Duty	Accepted the principle of legal, regulated gambling; concluded a betting tax was practicable
1933	Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting	Argued that prohibitions on gambling should be minimal but thought betting offices should remain illegal
1934	Betting and Lotteries Act	Legalised private and small public lotteries
1951	Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming	Recommended that bookmakers could accept cash bets in licensed premises; but that gaming machines be illegal
1956	Small Lotteries and Gaming Act	Introduced societies’ lotteries for charitable or sporting purposes
1960	Betting and Gaming Act	Legalised almost all forms of gambling including commercial gaming clubs, licensed betting offices, and gaming machines in a wide variety of venues
1963	Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act	Consolidated the 1960 Act
1968	Gaming Act	Brought in controls on casinos; established the Gaming Board
1975	Lotteries Act	Allowed local authorities to conduct good cause lotteries
1978	Royal Commission on Gambling	Recommended the setting up of a National Lottery; and removal of some of the restrictions on betting offices
1993	National Lottery Act	Made provision for the setting up of a National Lottery
2000	Gambling Review Body set	Set up to consider the current state of the up by the Home Office gambling industry; the social impact of gambling; and the need for change to regulations and treatment for problem gambling
2001	Gambling Review Body reported to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport	Recommended abolishing the principle of unstimulated demand for casinos and other gambling establishments; the legalising of larger prizes; tighter control on machines; and the setting up of a Gambling Commission

A hole is made in the ground, or some object is placed there, and the players pitch at same with pence or halfpence; he who pitches nearest the hole or object is entitled to the first toss into the air of all the pence played with and claims every piece of money which falls with head uppermost; he who pitched second best has the second toss and so on till all the players have successively tossed, or the money is exhausted. Sometimes, young boys play for cakes, but generally for money (cited by Clapson, 1992, pp.79–80).

Another witness to that committee suggested that playing such games was particularly prevalent amongst “boys of loose habits and irregular propensities” (cited by Clapson, 1992, p.80). Nearly a hundred years later, pitch-and-toss gained notoriety as a cause of the Sheffield gang wars over the control of lucrative and illegal ‘tossing rings’ (Clapson, 1992). Perhaps nicely illustrating the ambivalence in attitude that surrounds almost all forms of gambling, pitch-and-toss gets a glowing reference (keeping “. . . a cool head and staking all on a single throw” being associated with manhood) in Rudyard Kipling’s poem If published in 1910 and still, at the end of the 20th century, topping the poll as the nation’s favourite poem.

In 1905, Masterman, author a few years later of The Condition of England, writing of the rise of gambling in the late Victorian period, said the “facts themselves are undeniable. The thing has come with a rush in almost a generation” (cited by Dixon, 1991, p.47). Part of this ‘thing’ was gambling on a range of sports events in addition to horse racing. These included betting on dog races, football matches, pigeon races, and games of bowls (Clapson, 1992). Dog racing had its origins in hare or rabbit coursing, popular earlier in the 19th century. Artificial quarry were substituted once the practice of using live bait was recognised as cruel, and greyhound racing boomed after World War I with the development of stadia in most British cities. They were more accessible to urban dwellers than were horse race meetings, and were artificially lit for evening racing. It was difficult, however, for the sport to overcome its earlier negative, dishonest image (hence the expression ‘going to the dogs’), and it experienced some fall in popularity after World War II (Clapson, 1992).

The beginnings of organised football in Britain in the 1880s led directly to the development of companies offering football pools betting (so called because, unlike most race betting where odds are fixed before the race takes place, but like the pari mutuel or totalisator race betting system, all betters’ stakes are pooled and prizes shared amongst winners). Always dominated by the city of Liverpool where the two biggest firms, Littlewoods and Vernons, were situated (despite some advocates, football pools betting was never nationalised in Britain as it was in Sweden), football pools betting became immensely popular in the first half of the 20th century. By 1913 the Morning Post estimated that two million football coupons were issued every week, and by the late 1930s it had become a weekly ‘flutter’ for over ten million people nationally (Clapson, 1992). The years immediately after World War II saw the development of the ‘treble chance’ which offered large ‘jackpot’ prizes. Despite a recommendation by the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (the Willink Commission, 1949–51) that top prizes should be reduced, and the voluntary imposition of a ceiling on prizes by pools firms, it was clear that jackpots were popular and they went on rising, exceeding £100,000 for the first time in 1950 and £200,000 in 1957. In any event ‘doing the pools’ was by then seen as an important and largely harmless feature of national life. As the Memorandum of the Roman Catholic Church to the Royal Commission of 1949–51 put it, pools had become “a national pastime [and were] beneficial, since in many homes happy evenings are spent by the family remaining together and filling up their coupons” (cited by Clapson, 1992, p.174).

The diversity of forms that gambling can take is illustrated by two other forms described by Clapson, both popular in the first half of the 20th century but declining in popularity thereafter, and both particularly popular in the North of England on which his book focused. These were betting on pigeon racing and on crown bowling, a form of bowls popular in the North in which the green is raised in the centre falling away to the edge. Betting on cards continued to be legal in the family in private but illegal in gambling establishments until the legalisation of casinos in the 1960s. Yet other forms of gambling, which will be discussed more fully in Chapter 2 since they feature prominently in late 20th-century British gambling, are slot-machine gambling (present since Edwardian times and already big business and attracting criticism by the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s) and lotteries (illegal in all forms throughout most of the 19th century and well into the 20th, and with no national government lottery in the modern period until the very last years of the 20th century).

One could go further and include the buying and selling of stocks and shares as a form of gambling. We think that is to stretch the definition of ‘gambling’ rather far. For one thing there is nothing in speculating on the stock market that corresponds exactly to a stake or wager which is forfeited if the forecast is wrong. Certainly it is outwith all 19th- and 20th-century legislation on betting and gaming. It has to be admitted, however, that the boundary around the concept of ‘gambling’ is a fuzzy one. Certainly Clapson (1992) included extensive discussion of premium bonds since they include a prize element. Furthermore he considered that their introduction in Britain in the 1950s paved the way for the later introduction of the National Lottery. They were certainly opposed at the time, partly on the grounds that they were a form of gambling and therefore not something that should be promoted by government. As we shall see in Chapter 6, gamblers themselves hold differing opinions about what to include in or exclude from the definition of gambling.

Opposed and ambivalent views of gambling

Dixon (1991) believed that gambling was never, anywhere, defined with ethical neutrality or indifference, and Reith (1999) saw two separate traditions out of which modern ambivalence towards gambling had emerged. One was a ‘tradition of licence’, generally condoning all forms of play as manifestations of positive features of human nature including playfulness, gameness, composure under stressful or risky circumstances, character, and even courage, bravery and heroism (as in Kipling’s poem). The opposing tradition, although the terminology has changed much over the years, “. . . has persistently regarded gambling as fundamentally problematic and condemned it as variously sinful, wasteful, criminal and pathological” (Reith, p.2). Supporters of that position had included Reformation church leaders (gambling as sinful), champions of the Enlightenment (gambling as irrational), and upholders of the capitalist work ethic (gambling as idle gain opposed to the steady accumulation of wealth through hard work). Clapson (1992) point...