The raids, as reported by the Powlett Express, September 4, 1952 Jim Bell never forgot the day the gaming squad raided the Wonthaggi Workmen’s Club with sledgehammers and axes. (Warning: Jim’s stories always contained strong language.)
By Jim Bell
BOOKMAKING was illegal in Victoria but every Saturday six SP bookmakers bet on the Melbourne races – Caulfield, Flemington, Moonee Valley – at the Wonthaggi Workmen’s Club. They paid so much a day to the club and they had to put up money as a guarantee that they wouldn’t go broke and not pay. They paid that to the club. There was a waiting list – you had to wait till a bookmaker died to get in.
I was working as a penciller for a cousin of mine. He was a rabbiter but betting was his pastime. He put up the money to be an SP at the club. I ran the book for him, calculated the odds and all that. Money was pretty scarce. I was getting three quid a day as a penciller when tradesmen’s wages were only five or six quid a week.
The betting came through from Melbourne. We had a bloke used to ride a pushbike from the Workmen’s Club to the Post Office to get the betting on Saturday morning – they had a direct phone line. When the races started, there’d be two blokes riding up on pushbikes getting the market on the course.
Considering tradesmen’s wages were only five or six quid a week, we used to hold big money. Blokes used to come down from the big Melbourne trainers: the Freedmans, Old Father Hoysted – Fred Hoysted – Scobie Breasley. They found out about the Workmen’s Club. The betting would start. “Six to four the field.” This old bugger I was working for would say, “This bloody thing shouldn’t be six to four. Seven to four the field!”
And if the money wasn’t flowing in quick enough, “Two to one the field! Two to one the field!”
And then the bloke from Father Hoysted would say, “Six hundred to three hundred!” And he’d go to the next one, “Four hundred to two hundred.” He’d get set with all of them. He could get more money on at the Workmen’s Club than he could in Melbourne.
There were bloody people everywhere! The radio would be going, broadcasting the race. Soon as the race was over, you’d set your book for the next race. Then you’d pay out, whatever price the SP was. Some would take starting price, some would take the prices you were offering. Bloody hundreds of people in the club, betting like buggery.
It was real big-time gambling, but it was well done. All the doors were shut, locked. If you wasn’t a member, you didn’t get in. If you got in, that only got you into the next door and there was another bloke standing in that. You had to bust through two to get in. All the windows had wooden bars as thick as your arm. No way you’re going to get in or out. All the back doors and windows were locked. We had a nit-keeper standing out the front looking for cars pulling up, anything suspicious. Everything was wired. There was a little button in the brickwork that the nitkeeper pressed when the cops were walking around. There were only about six cops in the town at the time. They’d see a cop coming up the street so he’d just press the button. So you’d hide your books and you’d be sitting talking.
The police knew what was going on, all right. Every Saturday morning, two old pensioners from the Workmen’s Club would take a bottle of whisky up to the police station for the bloody sergeant, a dozen of beer for each policeman; and another bloke’d be there with a leg of lamb or a roast of beef.
Harry Haddow was our nitkeeper. He knew all the cops and he never missed a beat. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and nothing took his mind off it. He was there to do a job. If he pressed the button, you got rid of your books and down to the bar and ordered a beer. When the cops walked through, they knew bloody well what we were up to. They all talked to us. On Friday night, I’d be out drinking with a couple of the young cops. They’d walk through the club on Saturday morning and say, “How’re you going, Jim?”
“All right. Good.”
The first time we got caught was during the Spring Carnival, on Show Day. Harry used to work in the power house. He was a labourer, shovelling coal into the boiler. This particular day, he was working there so they put on a blow-in. He’s gotta go to the toilet, but he don’t leave the door shut and he don’t leave nobody in his place.
We’re sittin’ betting and I look up and here’s the cop coming in the bloody room. I’d been out on the beer with him the night before. After he booked me, he said, “Why didn’t you run, you silly bugger? I wouldn’t have chased ya.”
I said, “What’s the good of running? You knew who I am. I didn’t want to bloody embarrass you that much.”
So we got caught. Three bookies and three pencillers. If we’d paid up and smiled, we’d have got rubbed out of the club for life and that was it. We’d never have been allowed in again. But we got a bloody smart lawyer, a real smart cookie from Melbourne. I don’t know how we got him. He became a QC later on.
So we get to court. The lawyer says, “Your Honour”, or whatever he called him, “can we do a deal? Can we save costs of everything, your time, my time. We’ll hold one up and if you find him guilty, they’re all guilty. One guilty, all guilty. We’ll get the case all over and done, you’re on your way back to Melbourne and so am I.”
“Yes, that sounds all right.”
The bloke that was doing the police side of it was an Inspector Paddy O’Keefe from Korumburra. He agreed. “That’ll be all right.”
Anyway, they give all their evidence. I’m sitting just behind the lawyer and I’m shitting myself. “Now,” he says, “keep your fingers crossed.”
The judge says, “Inspector O’Keefe, have you closed your case? Is that all the evidence you want to give?”
“Yes, your Honour.”
Well, this little dicky robin jumped up like a jack in the box. “My clients are all innocent! There’s nothing in the evidence to convict them. The evidence said ‘The Workmen’s Club’. It didn’t say that The Workmen’s Club was in Graham St, Wonthaggi. I say they were taking bets at the Caulfield Racecourse!”
The inspector jumped up. “I’ll soon tell you where it was.”
“No, no – you’ve closed your case.”
So the magistrate said, “Yes, you’re over-ruled. You’re right, there’s nothing to say that it was in Graham Street, Wonthaggi. It could have been, I don’t know, they could have been betting on the Caulfield Racecourse. Case dismissed!”
We said to the lawyer, “Come on, back up the club. We’ll get a gutsful of beer into you.”
“No,” he said, “I haven’t got time.” He said, “You go home, shut the door, pull the blind down and laugh like buggery! Then drink beer. But when you come out in the sunlight, don’t laugh. I’ve got you off, but I won’t be able to get you off again.”
We went for another 18 months, two years, and we’re betting away. In them days, there was that much work up here in the mines people were coming every bloody day looking for work. Anyway, one little bloke come up, he was a little sawn-off bloke. I forget what he bloody introduced himself as ... he come up and he got working out with the coal miners and he was out boozing after hours round all the pubs that were sly groggin’ and all that. One of the boys, you know, pissing up large, backing horses, betting with me and betting with every other bugger in the club.
Three weeks later, he brought another bloke up and he got a job in the mines. He introduced him as his cousin. Cousin all right!
Well, Harry Haddow’s standing out the front this Saturday. He’s standing there talking to this bloody head of the bloody gaming branch, and a bloody big furniture van pulls up, right in front of the club. So Harry thinks, “This is a bloody raid.” He goes to put his hand behind his back on the button. And the bloke grabbed his bloody hand. He says, “Get your bloody hand away from that, for chrissake. This looks like a van load of cops.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and this is another cop that’s got you by the hand. You’re under arrest.”
They had sledge hammers and axes and they bashed their way in. We all went down. Six bookies and their pencillers. We got rubbed out for life. They not only caught us, they rounded up everyone else. But they were mainly after The Workmen’s Club. They were going to do their licence. That’s what they were frightened of. So they had to make out they didn’t know it existed, that nothing like that had happened. I gave evidence.
“Are you a bookmaker?”
“No, I was just helping out a friend.”
“Did you get paid?”
“No, I was just doing it for beer money.”
And of course that come out in the local paper. The old woman said, “Bloody pisspot. Couldn’t you have just said, ‘I got paid a quid a day.’”
I was in the doghouse properly. So I gave it away. We were all first offenders, so none of us got jail. I got fined about 20 quid. And the boss got fined 40. Anyway, that was all right. The bosses paid the fines, but I got a conviction to prove it.
But we got life. Life out of the club. Four months later, I got an official letter from The Workmen’s Club to come and rejoin and just put my name down as Jim Bell. Not James Alexander Bell, that I got convicted under.
But I give the bookmaking away. At least for a while.
Born in 1922, Jim Bell lived for his first 86 years at No. 107 Reed Crescent, Wonthaggi. This is an edited extract from Tales of Jim Bell, as told to Catherine Watson in 2009, the year before Jim died.
BOOKMAKING was illegal in Victoria but every Saturday six SP bookmakers bet on the Melbourne races – Caulfield, Flemington, Moonee Valley – at the Wonthaggi Workmen’s Club. They paid so much a day to the club and they had to put up money as a guarantee that they wouldn’t go broke and not pay. They paid that to the club. There was a waiting list – you had to wait till a bookmaker died to get in.
I was working as a penciller for a cousin of mine. He was a rabbiter but betting was his pastime. He put up the money to be an SP at the club. I ran the book for him, calculated the odds and all that. Money was pretty scarce. I was getting three quid a day as a penciller when tradesmen’s wages were only five or six quid a week.
The betting came through from Melbourne. We had a bloke used to ride a pushbike from the Workmen’s Club to the Post Office to get the betting on Saturday morning – they had a direct phone line. When the races started, there’d be two blokes riding up on pushbikes getting the market on the course.
Considering tradesmen’s wages were only five or six quid a week, we used to hold big money. Blokes used to come down from the big Melbourne trainers: the Freedmans, Old Father Hoysted – Fred Hoysted – Scobie Breasley. They found out about the Workmen’s Club. The betting would start. “Six to four the field.” This old bugger I was working for would say, “This bloody thing shouldn’t be six to four. Seven to four the field!”
And if the money wasn’t flowing in quick enough, “Two to one the field! Two to one the field!”
And then the bloke from Father Hoysted would say, “Six hundred to three hundred!” And he’d go to the next one, “Four hundred to two hundred.” He’d get set with all of them. He could get more money on at the Workmen’s Club than he could in Melbourne.
There were bloody people everywhere! The radio would be going, broadcasting the race. Soon as the race was over, you’d set your book for the next race. Then you’d pay out, whatever price the SP was. Some would take starting price, some would take the prices you were offering. Bloody hundreds of people in the club, betting like buggery.
It was real big-time gambling, but it was well done. All the doors were shut, locked. If you wasn’t a member, you didn’t get in. If you got in, that only got you into the next door and there was another bloke standing in that. You had to bust through two to get in. All the windows had wooden bars as thick as your arm. No way you’re going to get in or out. All the back doors and windows were locked. We had a nit-keeper standing out the front looking for cars pulling up, anything suspicious. Everything was wired. There was a little button in the brickwork that the nitkeeper pressed when the cops were walking around. There were only about six cops in the town at the time. They’d see a cop coming up the street so he’d just press the button. So you’d hide your books and you’d be sitting talking.
The police knew what was going on, all right. Every Saturday morning, two old pensioners from the Workmen’s Club would take a bottle of whisky up to the police station for the bloody sergeant, a dozen of beer for each policeman; and another bloke’d be there with a leg of lamb or a roast of beef.
Harry Haddow was our nitkeeper. He knew all the cops and he never missed a beat. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and nothing took his mind off it. He was there to do a job. If he pressed the button, you got rid of your books and down to the bar and ordered a beer. When the cops walked through, they knew bloody well what we were up to. They all talked to us. On Friday night, I’d be out drinking with a couple of the young cops. They’d walk through the club on Saturday morning and say, “How’re you going, Jim?”
“All right. Good.”
The first time we got caught was during the Spring Carnival, on Show Day. Harry used to work in the power house. He was a labourer, shovelling coal into the boiler. This particular day, he was working there so they put on a blow-in. He’s gotta go to the toilet, but he don’t leave the door shut and he don’t leave nobody in his place.
We’re sittin’ betting and I look up and here’s the cop coming in the bloody room. I’d been out on the beer with him the night before. After he booked me, he said, “Why didn’t you run, you silly bugger? I wouldn’t have chased ya.”
I said, “What’s the good of running? You knew who I am. I didn’t want to bloody embarrass you that much.”
So we got caught. Three bookies and three pencillers. If we’d paid up and smiled, we’d have got rubbed out of the club for life and that was it. We’d never have been allowed in again. But we got a bloody smart lawyer, a real smart cookie from Melbourne. I don’t know how we got him. He became a QC later on.
So we get to court. The lawyer says, “Your Honour”, or whatever he called him, “can we do a deal? Can we save costs of everything, your time, my time. We’ll hold one up and if you find him guilty, they’re all guilty. One guilty, all guilty. We’ll get the case all over and done, you’re on your way back to Melbourne and so am I.”
“Yes, that sounds all right.”
The bloke that was doing the police side of it was an Inspector Paddy O’Keefe from Korumburra. He agreed. “That’ll be all right.”
Anyway, they give all their evidence. I’m sitting just behind the lawyer and I’m shitting myself. “Now,” he says, “keep your fingers crossed.”
The judge says, “Inspector O’Keefe, have you closed your case? Is that all the evidence you want to give?”
“Yes, your Honour.”
Well, this little dicky robin jumped up like a jack in the box. “My clients are all innocent! There’s nothing in the evidence to convict them. The evidence said ‘The Workmen’s Club’. It didn’t say that The Workmen’s Club was in Graham St, Wonthaggi. I say they were taking bets at the Caulfield Racecourse!”
The inspector jumped up. “I’ll soon tell you where it was.”
“No, no – you’ve closed your case.”
So the magistrate said, “Yes, you’re over-ruled. You’re right, there’s nothing to say that it was in Graham Street, Wonthaggi. It could have been, I don’t know, they could have been betting on the Caulfield Racecourse. Case dismissed!”
We said to the lawyer, “Come on, back up the club. We’ll get a gutsful of beer into you.”
“No,” he said, “I haven’t got time.” He said, “You go home, shut the door, pull the blind down and laugh like buggery! Then drink beer. But when you come out in the sunlight, don’t laugh. I’ve got you off, but I won’t be able to get you off again.”
We went for another 18 months, two years, and we’re betting away. In them days, there was that much work up here in the mines people were coming every bloody day looking for work. Anyway, one little bloke come up, he was a little sawn-off bloke. I forget what he bloody introduced himself as ... he come up and he got working out with the coal miners and he was out boozing after hours round all the pubs that were sly groggin’ and all that. One of the boys, you know, pissing up large, backing horses, betting with me and betting with every other bugger in the club.
Three weeks later, he brought another bloke up and he got a job in the mines. He introduced him as his cousin. Cousin all right!
Well, Harry Haddow’s standing out the front this Saturday. He’s standing there talking to this bloody head of the bloody gaming branch, and a bloody big furniture van pulls up, right in front of the club. So Harry thinks, “This is a bloody raid.” He goes to put his hand behind his back on the button. And the bloke grabbed his bloody hand. He says, “Get your bloody hand away from that, for chrissake. This looks like a van load of cops.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and this is another cop that’s got you by the hand. You’re under arrest.”
They had sledge hammers and axes and they bashed their way in. We all went down. Six bookies and their pencillers. We got rubbed out for life. They not only caught us, they rounded up everyone else. But they were mainly after The Workmen’s Club. They were going to do their licence. That’s what they were frightened of. So they had to make out they didn’t know it existed, that nothing like that had happened. I gave evidence.
“Are you a bookmaker?”
“No, I was just helping out a friend.”
“Did you get paid?”
“No, I was just doing it for beer money.”
And of course that come out in the local paper. The old woman said, “Bloody pisspot. Couldn’t you have just said, ‘I got paid a quid a day.’”
I was in the doghouse properly. So I gave it away. We were all first offenders, so none of us got jail. I got fined about 20 quid. And the boss got fined 40. Anyway, that was all right. The bosses paid the fines, but I got a conviction to prove it.
But we got life. Life out of the club. Four months later, I got an official letter from The Workmen’s Club to come and rejoin and just put my name down as Jim Bell. Not James Alexander Bell, that I got convicted under.
But I give the bookmaking away. At least for a while.
Born in 1922, Jim Bell lived for his first 86 years at No. 107 Reed Crescent, Wonthaggi. This is an edited extract from Tales of Jim Bell, as told to Catherine Watson in 2009, the year before Jim died.