FROM THE ARCHIVES:A raid on an illegal bookie's office at 7 Fownes Street, Dublin, in 1877 left The Irish Timesdemanding more prosecutions in this editorial about the evils of gambling – JOE JOYCE
THE ACTIVE and successful raid made by the detective police yesterday on a colony of betting people in the city may be of some service in checking a system of profligacy which is daily the ruin of many young men amongst us.
Indeed there is reason to fear that several painful and scandalous disclosures, which have within the last few months taken place in the affairs of men who are not young, have been largely owing to practices of secret gambling, which ultimately brought social destruction along with financial collapse.
More than one case will rise before the public mind in which the delinquent enjoyed a fine income, filled a high and responsible position, and moved in good society, until within a few hours of the toppling over at once of both fortune and prospects. Imprisonment, which, for the sake of society was well deserved, overtook some. Exile was the resort of others. But in either case the peculations which thus carried their own reward came upon the public with a surprise that was startling, and that went a long way to shake further confidence in appearances.
To-day stilting in the clouds, with the high-head of self sufficiency and apparent prosperity; to-morrow in the very mire of degradation and disgrace – it is hard at times to tell who’s who. The general impression is that in such cases the fall, when it comes, has not been so much the result of improvidence at home, or of expensive entertainments, or of living beyond one’s means, as of a reckless speculation in those gambling hells which, at length, bring down terrible retribution, not alone upon the immediate offenders, but upon their families.
Of late, whisperings were abroad that the profligacy of the betting houses was running wilder riot than ever in Dublin; that the number of houses which carried on the alluring but destructive traffic was increasing; and that the sums turned over in them were something enormous.
The police, who laid their plans so adroitly and executed them so promptly yesterday, have begun a wholesome process of extermination which, we trust, will be vigorously followed up. It is said that if there were no betting-houses there would be no betting. No doubt the total suppression of such places would, after a time, lead to a good deal of social and even moral improvement. But, unfortunately, by a hitch in the Act of Parliament, that which is illegal within doors may be carried on openly . . . on the racecourse. To such an extent has betting become an institution of the times that it is now recognised by the newspapers as a systematic item of intelligence which it would be almost impossible to omit from the columns of news, and which, probably, has a larger number of readers than any other section of ephemeral information which we could name.
http://url.ie/a6k8