Modern mechanised greyhound racing emerged overnight in 1926, but it had a long pedigree ranging back to coursing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What was new and distinct about it was that greyhounds were now to be run on oval tracks with the use of a mechanical hare and within a stadium – except on the temporary ‘tracks of eight days’ allowed to be set upon agricultural land or spare land under the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act, and operating on open ground with no properly laid out track. The development of the new type of greyhound tracks represented an enormous financial investment in both the building of the tracks and the infrastructure of the sport, and it is not surprising that greyhound racing became one of the fastest growing areas of expenditure on leisure and sport. Indeed, it soon became the third largest commercial sporting activity in inter-war Britain.1 A basic uniformity of stadium design and organisation, regardless of size, emerged to characterise the sport, with new tracks being opened at new stadiums, such as Wembley, alongside those opened at established football grounds, such as Stamford Bridge, or at athletic tracks such as the White City in London.2 However, imposed upon this were a set of variable arrangements and conditions. Individual owners and companies with one or two tracks, large corporate companies with several tracks, and organisational groups often operated by different codes, and by different practices aimed at attracting different types of bettors, and responded to varying local economic and urban demands. Indeed, no two tracks were exactly alike. By the mid-1930s the servicing of these tracks was provided by about 25,000 full-time and part-time workers, whose number had probably risen to at least 28,000 by 1950. These staff operated the gates, the amenities, the kennelling, the racing and the tote, and were supplemented by up to 12,000 bookmakers in the 1930s (down to about 4,000 in the 1950s as seen in chapter 2), whose presence was tolerated more on the small flapping tracks than on the larger tote-based NGRS/NGRC tracks. Thousands of people were also connected with breeding greyhounds. Therefore, there can be no accurate figure for the number of people directly and indirectly employed in the sport, on a full-time, part-time or private basis, though it is unlikely to have been less than 50,000 in the late 1930s and the late 1940s, to which might be added the many thousands of private greyhound owners. Greyhound racing was thus an interrelated complex of track organisation and action, and service industries, and a major employer in the leisure and sporting industries of Britain and urban local communities – particularly in the large urban centres of London and Manchester, and their suburbs, and in Glasgow.
Naturally the emergence of the new modern materialist culture of the greyhound track, the epitome of modernity during the inter-war years, raises questions about its growth and organisation. Who financed greyhound racing? What were the essential and ubiquitous features of a greyhound track and gambling? How were the tracks managed? How did the tracks differ in their business practice in dealing with their customers to meet the immensely variable conditions in which they operated? Who was employed on the tracks? And what impact did they have upon their local communities?
On the whole, the evidence suggests that the tracks were financed by the lower-middle class with an eye for a quick profit, as Mike Huggins has noted, and by some engineers, anxious to profit from their patent on their own tote machine. They were clearly complex and varied organisations which provided employment for a significant number of the local community. They were also managed by a professional group of managers whose very presence ensured that the owners could earn an income through their tote pool take, managers of the tracks not being allowed to be associated with the pool. However, there were clearly distinct differences between the larger NGRS/NGRC tracks and the, generally, much smaller ‘flapping tracks’, which encouraged the development of different business models – the former being driven by one based upon the tote whilst the latter were increasingly dominated by the need to earn gate money, which itself was dependent upon the presence of the bookmakers to attract the bettors. The fact is that the tracks often operated in different ways to meet the needs of their differing customers and geographical and regional differences, although there was a base of essential features in their organisational activities. As for their acceptance, it has already been established that greyhound tracks appealed to local working-class communities in order to dispel the hostility of the anti-gambling middle classes that they were not offering a rational recreation. Part of that process was for the NGRS/NGRC to establish its legitimacy as a well-organised and regulated sport, running to a recognised and responsible routine, operating a fraud-free tote system and a proper register of greyhounds, with which to inspire confidence and reliability. The fact is that this legitimacy was only partly established before the consolidation of the sport in the early 1970s, the apparent large profits from the gambling that took place on the tracks never quite allowing greyhound racing to be regarded as a legitimate business and a rational recreation, even though those profits were very substantially reduced after the passing of the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act.
Investing in the tracks and the small-scale middle-class and professional investor
Investing in any new sporting and gambling venture was, and remains, a risky business. This was particularly true of greyhound racing where many investors were carried away with the reports of high returns without assessing the basic risks involved. As the sport became popular the number of greyhound companies and tracks mushroomed within the space of two or three years as businessmen and small-scale middle-class punters speculated to earn money from its growth. In 1926 there were only three greyhound companies in Britain – the Greyhound Racing Association, initially financed by William Gentle who provided the initial £22,000 to finance the floating of the company, the Liverpool Greyhound Club and another Greyhound Racing Associated Trust Ltd (with £1 million nominal capital).3 By 1927 another 116 companies, such as the British Greyhound Club, Leeds Greyhound Association Ltd, the Bradford Greyhound Association, Middlesbrough Greyhound Association, Bolton Greyhound Racing Co. Ltd, Wembley Stadium (with a £230,000 notional share issue), West Ham Greyhound Racing Ltd (with £125,000 nominal capital and £120,000 issued capital) and Arms Park (Cardiff), and Ilford Stadium Group (£40,000 nominal capital), were registered.4 In March 1928 there were 172 (175 by April) registered greyhound companies, although according to John Buchan MP, only about forty were actually open for business.5
There were initial fears that the sport would fall as quickly as it rose. Indeed, in 1929, the Daily News published an article entitled ‘Greyhound Racing Bubble: Many Investors May Lose Life Savings’, reporting on a sorry state of affairs of the Greyhound Racing Associated Trust and the decline of its share values from 6s 6d (32.5p) to 6d (2.5p).6 The article also listed the declining share values of many other stadiums. Wembley Stadium deferred shares were down from a high of 10s 6d to 4s; West Ham deferred shares had fallen from 5s 7.5d to 3d; the White City (London) deferred shares were down from 5s 7.5d to 6d; and the White City (London) preferred shares down from 10s to 2s 6d. In 1929 the Home Secretary believed, exaggeratedly and inaccurately as it turned out, that greyhound racing would soon expire.7
Indeed, some of these early companies did not survive long enough to open for business. The Southern Course Racing Stadium Company, based at Sydenham in south London, was registered on 12 August 1927 and liquidated on 16 January 1928, not having opened a track though having bought some dogs.8 Its main instigator was the engineer Ernest Allday Coleman, from Birmingham, who was promoting his own invention the Coleman Steeplechase Electric Hare. His other directors included Robert Osborne Graham of Dorking, William Proner, Joseph Brown and John Lacey, a London merchant. Many other companies were also formed but quickly went out of existence. The Midland Dog Racing Association was formed on 24 August 1927 but ceased on 3 January 1930.9 The European Racing Company Ltd, formed to open tracks in Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, opened in 1928 and expired in February 1929.10 The Metropolitan Dog Racing Association was registered on 17 April 1927 but ceased trading on 3 January 1930 and the Touring Greyhound Race Ltd registered on 22 August 1927 was dissolved on 11 July 1929.11 The Greyhound Racing Association (South Wales) survived rather longer and opened a track, but only lasted from 10 August 1927 until 4 April 1939.12 Others teetered on the edge of existence, sometimes surviving receivership. The Nottingham Greyhound Racing Company Ltd was registered on 15 August 1927, with the ubiquitous Critchley as one of its directors as well as shareholders. It almost expired in August 1933, nine months after greyhound totalisators had been declared illegal, but was saved and continued until 1948.13
Investment in greyhound racing was clearly a risky activity even in its early boom years. One can fairly speculate that those who invested obviously thought of the owners’ rake-off from the tote, often 10 or 12 per cent between 1929, when greyhound totes began to operate, and before the state imposition of the 6 per cent tote take limit in 1934 (not increased until the Betting and Lotteries Act of 1971). Yet they did not always take account of the costs of employing a manager to run the course and the cost involved in constructing and operating a track, the staff, and the whole business of stabling, training and timing greyhounds, and the providing of prize money.
Regardless of the costs, by the end of 1927 there were 131 greyhound companies registered with £3,744,250 of nominal capital, with issued capital at £868,561 5s 6d and debenture and other charges registered at £94,700.14 Although there were huge variations this meant that the average cost of each track, mainly NGRS tracks, was around £30,000 in the late 1920s, and this is partly confirmed by the fact that Harringay, an above-average sized track built for 50,000 people (3,000 seated and 47,000 on spectator terraces) was opened on 13 September 1927 at a cost of £35,000.15 Thereafter, costs obviously rose steadily over time as a result of inflation but with substantial differences depending upon the locations and the size of the track, though few NGRS tracks were opened after the late 1940s. There is limited specific information on the actual costs of the larger NGRS tracks but the smaller flapping tracks offer some indication of the scale of the investment. In 1950, the PGTCO indicated the cost of construction of its 119 large and small provincial flapping tracks, by then organised into Group 1 to Group 4 tracks. The records of twelve of its seventeen Group 1 large tracks with good facilities and the tote, like the NGRS tracks, indicated that their total building cost was £407,061, an average of £33,922 per track. The records of its nineteen of its thirty Group 2 tracks, which offered tote facilities but which were substandard to the Group 1 tracks, indicate that they cost £377,134 at an average cost of £19,848. The costs of the six of its twenty-three Group 3 tracks, which were substandard but offered the tote until the late 1940s, indicates a figure of £88,659 and an average track cost of £14,774. Ten of its forty-four Group 4 tracks, which were of a very poor standard of building and facilities, was £44,796 at an average cost of £4,480.16 One can surmise from all this evidence, allowing for some inflation of costs and partial information, that between the 1920s and the late 1940s, apart from the very large tracks, the average high quality NGRS and provincial flapping tracks cost about £30,000 to open in the 1920s and around £40,000 in the late 1940s. The Grade 1 PGTCO flapping tracks varied little from the NGRS tracks, whilst Grade 4, the cheapest, with few facilities and relying upon entry charges for their existence, cost less than £4,000 in the 1930s and possibly around £4,500 in the 1940s. There were exceptions to the rule such as Hackney Wick, a flapping track because it was deemed to be too close to another NGRS track rather than that it did not meet NGRS/NGRC standards, which opened in 1932 at a cost of £55,000.17 The greyhound bettor who attended meetings was therefore met by a wide range of betting experiences, and immensely varied facilities.
Yet precisely who invested in these greyhound companies? The surviving, and often patchy, records of the Board of Trade reveal the middle-class and professional nature of many of the investors. Greyhound Racing Track (Touring) which survived from only 1928 to 1931, was run by William Lenmarch and Graham James Hill, both accountant clerks who invested £800 in Ordinary and Preference shares.18 The Greyhound Association of South Wales, operating from 1927 until 1939, was even more emphatically financed by the professional middle class. Although Sir William Benjamin Gentle (the ex-Chief Constable of Brighton, Director of the Greyhound Racing Association, and on the Council of the NGRS and one of its vice-presidents) initially invested with it in 1928, the directors and main shareholders were Henry Howarth Hardman, a solicitor from London, Geoffrey Maurice Marie-Gushin, a solicitor from Pennarth, and Kenneth Thomas, a stockbroker from Cardiff. By 1935 only Marie-Gushin, of the original directors, remained and he was in the company of two new solicitors – George Robert Powell and Sir David Hughes Morgan – and Dudley Howard Pratt who had no employment but was possibly a ‘gentleman’.19
The records of the Nottingham Greyhound Racing Company Ltd are more revealing since they list all the shareholders. Registered in 1927 and dissolved in 1948, it was one of the first of the post-Second World War companies to cease greyhound racing as a result of the Tote Pool Duty, followed by Oxford Stadium at Cowley in 1949. The ubiquitous Sir William Gentle is listed as a director alongside the equally ubiquitous Brigadier-General Critchley. With them there were three directors of a middling sort – James Alfred Hartropp, a Leicestershire licensed victualler and wine merchant, William Parker, a farmer from Leicester, and John Farr, a Nottingham brewer. The directors remained the same over the next two years except that Gentle seems to have briefly ceased being a director for a few months before returning and Critchley continued on as simply as a shareholder. In their place appeared Thomas Hatton of Leicestershire, Director of Leicestershire Greyhound Racing Ltd. The company issued 100,000 one-shilling shares, raising a nominal capital of £5,000 and at the end of 1928 Gentle held 7,000 shares (worth £350) and Critchley held 1,000 shares (worth £100). Henry Howard Hardman, also listed as a director of the Greyhound Racing Association of South Wales, was a director with 7,000 shares. Hartropp, a director, was the biggest shareholder with 13,500 shares. The other shareholders, often holding only a few hundred shares, included a variety of solicitors, dentists, gentlemen and widows, spinsters, engineers and consulting engineers and Lady R. Manners of Grantham, a widow who held 500 shares worth £250. Many of these shareholders remained with the company until it was dissolved in 1948, and it was Hartropp who dealt with the receiver.20
The monied lower and middling middle class were also evident in many other greyhound track companies. The Portable Dog Racing Track Ltd, formed on 6 September 1927, was promoted by Edward Gillett, of Middlesex, Thomas Frank Gillett, of Peterford, an engineer, and Woodward Gillett. Geoffrey A. Brown, a solicitor, two solicitors’ clerks (Edward Titterton and P. R. Kimver) also invested, as did a clerk (Harold F. Mee). The company lasted until 1930.21 The City and Provincial Dog Racing and Trackster House Ltd, formed 27 October 1927 and dissolved on 12 November 1929, had four directors, all with 15,000 one-shilling shares – Arthur Freeman, a London gentleman; Thomas Rushton, of Brixton, a theatre manager; Percy Chapman, a licensed victualler; and Ernest Howarth, of Brighton, an accountant.22
The surviving records, admittedly mainly of short-lived failures, thus suggest that there were a number of rich businessmen like Critchley, Gentle and Hartropp who invested substantial amounts of money in a variety of greyhound ventures. However, beyond them it appears that most investors were relatively modest and small-scale – accountants, solicitors, solicitors’ clerks, merchants, beerhouse keepers, and the like – who had a few hundred pounds to invest. They were undoubtedly attracted to the prospect of the reported big profits to be made by the new booming sport and its tote but many did not appreciate how complex a financial and organisational activity greyhound racing was. There were also a significant number of engineers who invested in greyhound tracks, probably inspired by the prospect of promoting the machinery and engineering of greyhound tracks, and particularly with the prospect of making money from their own tote machine inventions. They had money but were perhaps the ‘less monied class’ that the London Evening News referred to in 1928.23 They were the class which the Daily News suggested may suffer badly from the bursting of the ‘Greyhound Racing Bubble’ in 1929.
The structure and infrastructure of a greyhound track: the morphology and operation of the track
The greyhound tracks that emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s were both newly constructed and adapted stadiums of variable size. The first custom-built stadium, with an oval track, was constructed at Belle Vue, Manchester, on the site of an old dog track, and many other new stadiums followed. Archibald Keir Leitch, a Scottish architect, was responsible for the design of almost forty football stadia built at that time, including Anfield, Goodison Park, Old Trafford, White Hart Lane and Highbury, and also designed the large West Ham Greyhound Stadium in Custom House.24 Walthamstow was newly built in 1932 and opened in April 1933, with the iconic Walthamstow clock tower and an Art Deco parapet. However, as already indicated, some stadiums were already established sports stadia. These included Wembley, opened in 1923 to host the FA Cup and other important cup final events, Stamford Bridge (the home of Chelsea football club) and the White City (London), which had been built for the London Olympics of 1908. These continued to house their alternative sports, just as many new ones, such as Blackpool and Elland Road, also attracted the sports of speedway, stock-car racing and other sporting activities, in what often proved to be a mutually beneficial financial marriage of convenience.
Greyhound tracks were of many different sizes, confined by the shape and size of the area of urban land into which they had to be fitted. A survey of sixteen greyhound tracks in the London area, conducted in the early 1960s, revealed a large variation in size. Park Royal and Dagenham, at 4.13 acres and 4.19 acres respectively, were the smallest. The famous Walthamstow Stadium covered 7.41 acres, Stamford Bridge covered 11.21 acres, West Ham 16 acres, and the largest dedicated stadium of them all was Harringay at 24.74 acres.25 There is little evidence on the size of many of the smaller provincial tracks but in large part, the Blackpools and the Wombwells of this world covered only three or four acres. Space therefore defined the track, its size, facilities and potential market.
The central feature of any permanent stadiums was the track itself, normally with a sand surface, although some tracks like Hendon and Wombwell (Barnsley) initially had a grass track. West Ham was unusual in that its entire surface was raised on wood twelve inches above the ground, which was covered by a matting surface imported from Sweden which merely had to be watered to keep it in good condition.26 Its advantage was that it was a fast track in most conditions and meetings were rarely cancelled because of the track conditions, although some owners were reluctant to run their dogs there because of the potential for hock injuries. Many of the tracks had a circumference of between 360 and about 460 yards (or around 330 to 420 metres), which is pretty much the circumference of the small number of tracks still operating in the twenty-first century. Belle Vue and Walthamstow tracks were both 440 yards long (402 metres). However, Catford greyhound track, in London, had a tight 369-yard circumference and the Hendon track was, at 398 yards, considered to have sharp bends. At the other extreme, West Ham was the largest track in Britain with a circumference of 562 yards, although the track did not quite complete the full circuit.27 Tracks were normally prepared to deal with six to eight traps out of which the dogs would start but six traps became the rule from 1 January 1927. Nevertheless, the first meeting at Belle Vue, in July 1926, had seven traps, whilst in 1932 and 1933 Catford ran races with four and five dogs on seven-race fixtures. Inside the tracks was the Judge’s Box. On both the inside and the outside of the sand tracks was the mechanical hare. Not all stadiums initially installed the electrical mechanical hare. For its first ten years, 1928 to 1938, Brighton and Hove stadium operated a hare which was wound round the course by hand. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1930s most stadiums had one electrical mechanical hare, normally drawn from a number of systems on offer. Walthamstow, Harringay and Hendon (opened in 1935) operated the ‘Outside Sumner’ but Harringay also operated a second system, the ‘Outside McGee (McKee)’ as well. Owlerton Stadium, Sheffield, also had two mechanical hare systems, the ‘Inside Sumner’ and the ‘Outside McCable’. Catford Stadium operated the ‘Outside Breco Silent’ before it was changed to the more conventional ‘Outside McGee’. Brighton and Hove operated an ‘Inside MacWhirter’s Trackless’.28
When greyhound racing first began it was confined to the afternoons of the summer months because most tracks lacked overhead lighting for evening and winter races. Indeed, prestigious Brighton and Hove did not install electric lighting until 1938, ten years after it opened. However, by the 1930s the sand and grass tracks and the mechanical hare system were in turn often illuminated by electric lighting operating on pylons, on the grandstand, or even on supports overhanging the tracks.
All permanent stadiums had some type of grandstand, often attached to the main enclosure. In the smaller tracks these were little more than open sheds, temporary sheds or tents for the occasional meetings of ‘tracks of eight days’ that had no permanent facilities. In the larger stadiums they were much more substantial and offered a wide range of facilities. In the 1930s, for instance, Harringay had a large stadium with some eating and drinking facilities and in 1950 it provided a glass front to its grandstand which allowed it to open a restaurant, fourteen buffet bars and ten licensed bars. The West Ham Stadium had, from the start, one large two-tiered grandstand with facilities for eating and drinking. At Walthamstow there were two tearooms and a wet and dry bar in the main grandstand, with sixteen tote buildings attached. Brighton and Hove stadium (now known as the Coral Brighton and Hove stadium) had several stands but its grandstand enclosure had eating facilities and later had three buffet bars and seven licensed bars.29
Betting was the life blood of all greyhound tracks and most stadia offered both tote and bookmaking facilities. The NGRS/NGRC stadiums tried to restrict gambling to the tote by making it difficult for bookmakers to be present whilst the smaller flapping tracks were far more intent on attracting bookmakers, largely because many of them did not operate the expensive tote facilities before the inter-war years, and many of those that did gave them up after the introduction of the Tote Pool Duty in 1948 (see chapter 2). Above all, these tracks were concerned about the introduction of the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty in late 1948 since some gave up the tote and became increasingly reliant upon bookmakers being present to provide betting opportunities to maintain and boost their gate receipts.
Inevitably, then, the essential feature of any greyhound stadium was the provision of betting enclosures. Some of the smaller stadiums had one betting enclosure and a few larger ones occasionally offered four, but, though the number varied over time, throughout the twentieth century most tracks operated with two betting enclosures. Indicative of this is the fact that of 105 PGTCO tracks listed in 1953, generally the smaller flapping tracks, ten had one enclosure, eighty-seven had two enclosures and eighteen had three.30 Most of the larger NGRS tracks had two or three enclosures (see Table 2.6).
The different enclosures catered for different types of bettor and the costs of entry varied accordingly. In the inter-war years the cost of the enclosure entry charges often varied from one shilling (5p), to two shillings (10p) or 2s 6d (12.5p). By 1950 entry into the best ring at NGRS tracks (mainly for the professional or semi-professional bettors) cost 3s 6d (17.5p) in the tracks that attracted attendances of less than 2,000, to 4s (20p) for those between 2,000 and 5,000 attendees and six shillings (30p) for those with attendances over 5,000. The charge, as indicated in Table 2.6, for entry to all the best rings in London was about 7s 6d (37.5p). The second-class ring, normally catering for all other bettors, generally cost four shillings entry across all sizes of stadiums. In the small number of stadiums where there were three enclosures, the poorest enclosure catered to the poor working-class and occasional bettor, and the normal entry charge was 1s (5p).31 The flapping traps were usually cheaper, with entry charges ranging from 1 shilling to 2 shillings for the first enclosure and 1s 6d to 2s for the second in 1950.32
The majority of tracks, at any time in the history of British greyhound racing, were dominated by the presence of the tote building and numerous points in the stadium at which tote betting could be conducted. The number of tote tracks varied over time because of both the formation and closure of tracks and also because many first operated and then closed their tote facilities because of taxation. Yet it seems that just over 70 per cent of tracks offered totalisator betting between the 1920s and the late 1940s. In the mid-1940s the seventy-seven NGRS tracks, and seventy-one of the 119 PGTCO tracks, offered tote facilities whilst the other thirteen small independent tracks, of the permanent tracks, had no such facilities, as already indicated in chapter 2. Contrasting evidence was often presented to the royal commissions (particularly those of 1949–51 and 1976–78) and to the Home Office but it appears that at least forty-one PGTCO tracks abandoned the tote between 1948 and 1951, and that as a result some of these greyhound companies ceased trading altogether. As indicated earlier in Table 2.9, 138 of the surviving 198 tracks operated the tote in 1951, again suggesting that about 70 per cent of tracks operated the totalisator. Another estimate suggested that the percentage was about 82 per cent of the 196 NGRS and PGTCO tracks, 157 with and thirty-nine without, at the beginning of 1948, but that owing to the closure of thirty-two totalisators the position in 1950 was 64 per cent (125 tracks) with totalisators and 36 per cent (71 tracks) without.33 There were also independent tracks in the inter-war and immediate post-war years that did not operate the tote. Whatever the date, the evidence suggests that a clear majority of greyhound tracks operated a totalisator throughout the history of British greyhound racing. Later, when the decline on greyhound racing had set in the situation remained similar; in 1977, seventy-six of the 107 tracks operated the totalisator. Eventually all the flapping tracks not operating the tote closed and all the twenty-four NGRC tracks and the nine or so independent tracks that survive in the twenty-first century now operate the tote. Thus the tote building and the tote betting outlets dominated the architecture and morphology of most tracks throughout the history of modern greyhound racing.
The closure of the tote on some courses in the late 1940s and early 1950s came as a result of its expense and the imposition of the Tote Pool Duty in 1948. The expense of operating a totalisator had been a defining feature of the division of greyhound tracks for all NGRS/NGRC tracks had to have such a system to be accepted as one of their ‘licenced tracks’, although there were other requirements which meant that some flapping tracks were excluded even if they had a totalisator. Lord Askwith, of the NGRS, in a deputation to the Home Secretary in November 1933, spoke of the need for a reasonable owners’ take from the tote ‘because the Tote is an expensive investment’.34 Tote machines seem to have cost between £13,000 and £30,000, a significant part of the cost of building a stadium, to install in the early 1930s, and from about £8,000 to just over £30,000, as indicated in Table 3.1.35 The Bell Punch Totalisator Equipment was one of the most expensive systems and was advertised through The Greyhound Year Books.36 The immense variation occurred as a result of the fact that some tracks, like London Track A and London Track B were electro-automatic hand-operated totes whilst Midland Track D was purely hand-operated. The Scottish Track E and the Welsh Track F were also electro-automatic hand-operated totes.37
Table 3.1 Cost of tote installation, tote turnover and net profits after costs, 1932–33
| Track | Cost of installing tote | Tote turnover | Profit after costs |
| £ | £ | £ | |
| Track A London track | 30,452 | 802,512 | 88,816 |
| Track B London track | 21,574 | 420,894 | 52,328 |
| Track C Midland track | 480 [?] | 71,861 | |
| Track D Midland track | 8,891 | 90,275 | 10,708 |
| Track E Scotland track | 8,799 | 244,318 | 28,752 |
| Track F Welsh track | 12,448 | 83,444 | 9,829 |
Source: HO 45/15853/663794/31, report of a deputation of the NGRS.
These substantial costs were borne by the NGRS and the larger flapping tracks because the provision of better facilities (bars, club membership and other facilities mentioned below) was part of the process of legitimising the greyhound tracks, for the tote was presented as being a safe way to bet. In most cases the human operator was present at this time but there were developments towards the introduction of an automatic slot machine. The British Totalisator Manufacturers’ Conference, in its evidence to the Home Office and the Rowlatt Commission (1932–33) offered the interim reports of the Automatic Electric Company Limited, that the system of feeding bets into an automatic machine made it ‘safe and reduced the risk of fraud’. For
with the exception of a small number of employees, whose active moves are open to check, the human element is eliminated altogether from Electro-Mechanical Totalisator betting. [Human beings] are no more than intelligent automats, and their place could in fact be taken by automated machines of the coin slot type. Such a machine has in fact been developed and has obtained the approval of the Racecourse Betting Control Board [for horse racing].38
Such entirely automatic machines were slow to develop but the fact is that the manufacturers were defending their own industry, a part of which, greyhound racing though not horse racing, was a new British engineering industry development employing several thousand engineers and workers.39
Surrounding the track, the hare, the electric lighting, the grandstand, restaurants, the bars, restaurants, the enclosures and the tote facilities, lay a whole host of other building in the greyhound stadium connected with the running of the races. There would be a room for the judge or stewards, facilities for the operator of the mechanical hare, veterinary rooms, trainers’ rooms, and kennels on all tracks for the isolation of the dogs before the races. The large NGRS tracks had their own kennels and training facilities for their own dogs and those of the better-off private owner (see chapter 4). To attract family groups some of the larger tracks provided facilities for the children, a development which became a contentious issue in the ‘Tote crisis’ period of 1932 to 1934. The Carntyne track, Glasgow, provided facilities for children and Harringay track in north London provided an equipped playground for children.40 This provoked outrage in the House of Commons, where Mr T. Williams, the influential Labour MP for Don Valley, criticised this feature and was supported by the Independent Labour Party MP Tom Buchanan, but opposed by Critchley, at that time briefly MP for Twickenham in 1934–35.41 John McGovern, the Independent Labour Party MP for the working-class constituency of Glasgow Shettleston, in which the Carntyne track was located, felt that it was ‘a most degrading sight to see women and children taking children to nurseries on the track before going on to describe his two visits to the gloomy atmosphere of the dog meetings, although there was no disorder’.42 However, the purpose for the larger tracks was to make greyhound racing an afternoon or night out for the family at a time when the smaller flapping tracks were geared to providing more basic facilities for the male bettor – the PGTCO flapping tracks indicating that in the late 1940s only about 17 per cent of their crowds were women in the larger Group 1 tracks and about 11 per cent in the Group 2 and 3 tracks.43
In order to retain the loyalty of bettors most tracks provided some type of club facilities for annual members. The Brighton and Hove Club charged Gentlemen ten shillings and Ladies five shillings per annum to use the Members’ Club, and though it is not made clear it would appear that this was on and above the general admission charge to the track.44 The Greyhound Racing Yearbook 1933, and indeed all the annual editions of this book, list the members’ clubs and enclosure costs of all the tracks in Britain.
As a result of these various developments the greyhound tracks offered a standard range of facilities but with a wide range of track designs. The Harringay arena had parking near the entrance, with betting enclosures for the tote and bookmakers, on one side, with the track being an elongated but incomplete circle, with bars and other attractions dotted around the left-hand side of the entrance and bays.45 Clapton Greyhound Stadium had a complete circular track on the perimeter of a 400-foot long by 200-foot wide inner circle of land, with a covered stand on one side of the 400-foot stretch with a bar, and with a bar and dining area on the opposite side. One of the 200-foot lengths had a smaller stand and the opposite side had the totalisator, a bar and other facilities and was also the entrance to the stadium.46 Hendon stadium had quite a wide circular track with an inner area of 140 foot by 240 foot. The entrance side, off the London North Circular Road (a 240-foot stretch), had six sheltered bays for betting (though probably only two betting enclosures as such), and to the right of the entrance was an area with a canteen, toilets and various other facilities.47 The new Spennymoor track, opened in 1951, had a long back straight and a shorter home straight, where the two-shilling enclosure, the club, and the three-shilling enclosure were located. To the right of the track were the kennels, but there was no tote, probably due to the introduction of the Tote Pool Duty in 1948.48
The whole fabric of the built track and the whole running of the sport required a large army of permanent and temporary staff for its smooth operation. The officials of Wimbledon Greyhound Track summed this up succinctly, stating that:
The trainers of the kennels have to be remunerated, the officials command substantial remuneration. For every meeting there needs to be the officiating steward of the meeting, the racing manager and probably assistant race manager, time keeper, veterinary surgeon, judges, hare controller and engineers, turnstile operator, ground staff, security staff, office staff, publicity staff, and so on.49
But precisely how many people were employed on the tracks and who were they?
In 1933 John Bull, the famous patriotic journal of the Great War which was at one time run by the infamous fraudster Horatio Bottomley, stated, during the famous ‘Tote crisis’, ‘so the Tote has been shut down on all licensed dog-racing tracks, and at least 14,000 men have been thrown out of work’.50 This is almost certainly an underestimate of the employment greyhound racing offered for the whole sport although there are few precise figures on the number of people employed by the greyhound tracks because the number of tracks was forever changing and the figures supplied by the NGRS and the BGTCS/PGTCO were often for the majority, though not all, of the tracks under their control.
A census undertaken jointly by the NGRS and the PGTCO in April 1948 for the National Insurance Advisory Committee found that approximately 96 per cent of part-time workers employed solely at the greyhound tracks or elsewhere were married women.51 Those statistics produced by a NGRS survey in 1950 were slightly different. They suggested that, on seventy-three of their seventy-seven tracks, there were nearly 19,000 full or part-time employees, as indicated in Table 3.2. The average NGRS track attracting attendances in the thousands, employed about fifty-four full-time employees, of whom about eleven were women. On average each NGRS track also employed about 190 part-time employees, with slightly more women than men. However, it is clear that whilst nine out of ten of those part-time men held a job elsewhere it was the only employment for just over half the part-time women employed. Distilling this picture, it is clear that in 1950 the large NGRS tracks employed on average about 246 staff, that just under half were women, but that about 91 per cent of the women employed were part-time as opposed to full-time and that it was the only source of employment for just over half the female part-timers.
Table 3.2 Staff employed by seventy-three of the seventy-seven NGRS tracks in 1950
| Employees | Men | Women | Total P/T | Total |
| Permanent employees | 3,258 | 882 | 4,140 | |
| Part-time employees | ||||
| Employed elsewhere | 6,693 | 3,802 | 10,495 | |
| Not employed elsewhere | 684 | 3,630 | 4,314 | |
| Part-time total | 14,809 | |||
| Total | 10,635 | 8,314 | 14,809 | 18,949 |
Source: HO 335/177 evidence of the NGRS to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51), Appendix J.
This picture contrasts sharply with that of the flapping tracks, although here again the evidence is far from complete. Table 3.3, based on a survey conducted in 1950, indicates that almost 4,000 workers were employed in sixty-two flapping tracks replying to a survey, and since this represented less than half the number of such tracks it suggests that more than 8,000 people were employed on such tracks. There was an average of about twelve and a half full-time workers and around forty-nine part-time workers per track, which means that only about a fifth of the workers were full time. Women formed about 22 per cent of the full-time workforce, an average of fewer than three women per track. About 57 per cent of the part-timers were men but around 94 per cent of them had other employment. In contrast, women represented about 43 per cent of the part-time work force, and around 40 per cent of them had no other employment. There was also marked difference between the numbers of workers employed between the different grades of track, Grade 1 tracks employing well over twice as many as Grade 4 tracks.
Table 3.3 Employment details of sixty-two of the 132 PGTCO tracks in 1950
| Employment status | Tracks | Total | |||
| Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | Group 4 | ||
| Permanent men | 236 | 187 | 93 | 98 | 614 |
| Permanent women | 39 | 98 | 28 | 6 | 171 |
| (785) | |||||
| Part-time employment | |||||
| Employed elsewhere | |||||
| Part-time men | 489 | 542 | 276 | 381 | 1688 |
| Part-time women | 385 | 379 | 74 | 20 | 858 |
| Not employed elsewhere | |||||
| Part-time men | 30 | 13 | 14 | 43 | 100 |
| Part-time women | 302 | 157 | 26 | 38 | 523 |
| (3,169) | |||||
| Total | 1481 | 1376 | 511 | 586 | 3,954 |
Source: HO 335/87 evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–51).
Greyhound tracks relied heavily on experienced and full-time staff who were experts in their work. These workers – engineers, trainers, time-keepers, security officers and others – were often drawn from the local community. Many of them were specialists and W. Drewit and Hugh Watkins, of the medium-sized Brighton and Hove track suggested, during the ‘Tote crisis’ of 1932–34, that the closure of the tote and the track could close ‘employment to close upon fifty men, all of whom are specialists in their work and quite unemployable in any other industry’.52 The unemployability of these specialists may be debatable, but the comment does indicate the specific employment requirements of the medium- and large-scale tracks.53 One company, reporting upon the two tracks it owned at Stoke and Wolverhampton, pointed to the fact that because of the tote ban in 1933 it had had to dismiss its tote workers at the cost of £200 per week to the local economy.54
These people were fully employed and highly skilled specialists but most tracks clearly depended upon part-time workers from the local communities to act as cashiers and to operate the tote and catering facilities. There is very little information on these part-timers, though many of them appear to have been local housewives. What is available is limited, partial and possibly misleading evidence that both temporary and full-time civil servants wished to supplement their income with part-time work on the tracks in the early 1930s, at time when civil servant and public workers’ salaries had been cut by 10 per cent and more in the economic crisis of the early 1930s. The civil servants involved seem to have been largely those working in the Labour Exchanges and fully aware of the demand for reliable and skilled people from the tracks, particularly women. Attention was drawn to them by ‘Unemployed’ who raised the question that ‘Being unemployed and unable to get a job, do you think it fair for a civil servant Mr Roberts of the Bournemouth Labour Exchange to be working there [Greyhound Racing Park]?’55
Catford Greyhound Track, London, was supplied with women employees by the Women’s Department of the Lewisham Exchange which was opened on 22 June 1932. By 19 November 1932 the Labour Exchange had received 677 submissions for employment at Catford Stadium.56 This appears to have been mainly in connection with employment at the gate entrance of the stadiums and probably from housewives who were aiming to earn extra money for their families by taking on evening work. Some local civil servants were also supplementing their incomes in the early 1930s by working part-time at the tracks on an evening. A Miss Benwell worked at the dogs on a Saturday and a Miss Whitlock also applied to do so. G. A. A. Roberts, also an official at Lewisham Employment Exchange, worked at the Catford dog track.57 Mr Owen and Mr Nelson, at the same Labour Exchange, also worked at Catford as clerks connected with the tote, presumably taking bets, and were given notice to terminate their employment at the Exchange the following day after applying for a tote vacancy. Mr C. R. Eardsley, a temporary clerk of Stoke on Trent Employment Exchange, was offered employment at the local Albion Greyhound Stadium. C. M. Brough, a colleague, was offered part-time supervisory role at the Albion Greyhound Track for five shillings per night and noted in a letter that the Ministry of Labour rule is that he ‘is not allowed to make a bet and the work entailed is solely clerical, systemised and strongly controlled and confined to totalisator betting only’. He added that:
If allowed to undertake this work, I would ensure that nothing harmful in any would reflect or bring discredit on the Exchange or my usual work through my association with the above, and would undertake to inform you immediately if anything should occur in the future which may act to the detriment of the service.
C. M. Brough TME11158
From the few cases that emerged, it is quite clear that civil servants were drawn into the army of part-time staff of the greyhound tracks, particularly to man the tote exchanges by feeding forms into the manual, occasionally automated, system. The official line was that there should be no conflict of interests but even where there was apparently no such conflict the civil servants were threatened with losing their job for working in a sector that was not seen as quite respectable. However, they were only a small minority of all the workers employed, who were largely housewives drawn from the local communities to work two or three hours per night for five shillings.
Two main rival business models and the changing income stream, operating costs and profitability of tracks, 1926–61
There was obviously immense variation in the economics of the tracks that influenced how they operated, and individual track owners not connected with the NGRS or the flapping tracks organisations may have operated their own individual business models. However, two broad-based business models emerged until at least the 1960s, when betting companies became more involved in the operation of tracks. The generic business model of the large NGRS tracks, which employed well over four times the number of people employed on the flapping tracks, one designed for larger stadiums with large crowds, was highly focused upon the expensive operation of the tote. It sought to restrict the number of bookmakers and to dominate the sport through its own licensing system that only admitted to its ranks those tracks with a wide range of facilities. It offered its crowds high-quality graded races and the open races, such as the Greyhound Derby. Indeed, the NGRS indicted that in 1932 its tracks had paid £398,462 in prize money, about £9,000 per track, and this trend seems to have continued with its support of the large open classic races, although there is little specific collective information on this.59 The NGRS/NGRC tracks also prided themselves on providing the bettor with the latest information, and Wimbledon, for instance, introduced weight scales in 1929 so that it could inform the bettor of the weight of the dogs before the races. Here was a professional, slick, high standard, approach to activities, which ensured that only properly licensed and properly graded dogs could run at the meetings (see chapter 4). By offering a wide range of facilities for adults and children it sought to create a family atmosphere, and it is clear that the feeling was that the tote, being seen as free from fraud and the hassle of the bookmakers, attracted women. As the anti-gambling Mr Buchanan MP observed, in 1933 during the ‘Tote crisis’: ‘Everybody knows women began to attend in large numbers when the totalisator was introduced. Now that the totalisator has gone the attendances of women and children every week is on the decrease … Leave greyhound racing alone, Leave it to the bookmakers and you will see the attendance go down and down … The bookmaker is not attractive to women.’60
In contrast to the NGRS/NGRC tracks, the flapping tracks were much smaller operations, attracted much smaller crowds, were unable to employ as many members of staff, often found it difficult to operate the financially expensive tote, relied increasingly on bookmakers to attract bettors to their meetings, attracted a poorer standard of greyhound for smaller, graded, races, and were not able to be part of the open, competitive, race circuit. Their small scale ensured that prize money was much less than that offered by NGRS. In 1950 the PGTCO tracks only offered prize money of £2,025 per annum in Group 1 tracks, £1,533 on Group 2, £793 on Group 3, and £391 on Group 4 tracks.61 By that time many of the classic greyhound races operating on the NGRS tracks were worth many thousands in their own right.
The financial arrangements of the two systems were clearly different as they earned their incomes in different ways, though both were affected by new taxes on greyhound racing in the late 1940s. In the inter-war years the NGRS tracks earned their money from three main sources – gate money, refreshments and, from 1929, tote betting. This was much the same for the flapping tracks that operated the tote, although half of them never ever operated the tote. Most of the owners of the tracks who operated the tote employed managers, to overcome the fact that those who ran the tracks were not allowed to participate in gambling. The financial rewards of the early NGRS tracks and the tote-based flapping traps, once they had been successfully established, were enormous and the charge that they were ‘more profitable than King Solomon’s mines’ exaggerated but not entirely unfounded.62 Evidence offered by the NGRS to the Home Office at the end of 1934 in defence of the system operating before the banning of the tote, though not always financially consistent, suggests that the annual tote pool profit of nearly eighty NGRS tracks was about £100,000 per pool per year and that NGRC tracks were thus making £8 million per year from tote betting.63 There is no date on the figures but they were probably for 1932, the last year in which the tote operated fully before being temporarily declared illegal. These figures imply that the owners’ take from the tote pool was about 10–12 per cent, to cover the cost of its operation and for their own profits. Thus it is not surprising that the NGRS protested strongly against the clause in the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Bill that the owners tote take should be reduced to 6 per cent, which would reduce the owners’ profit, largely the tote take, to as little as £60,000 a year for the average NGRS track. These figures were skewered by being averaged as it reported that one London track, by no means the largest, had an annual tote pool turnover of £802,512 and another London track a turnover of £470,000. To this challenge was added the further suggestion in the Bill that the tracks be reduced to two meetings per week, instead of three or more, which led to the alarming concern that the tote turnover on these same two tracks quoted as examples would be on average reduced to £535,000 and £315,000, and the 6 per cent tote take would yield only about £32,000 and £19,000, respectively, to which might be added a few thousand extra from gate money and food and drink sales. The NGRS provincial tracks of Britain were much smaller. One (probably Powderhall in Edinburgh) had an annual tote turnover of £244,317 and a Welsh track (probably Cardiff) £83,449. There is little fine detail on these NGRS provincial tracks but it is likely that the Scottish one was making between £25,000 and £29,000 from the tote take and a few thousand from gate money and refreshment sales. Moving from three meetings to two per week and restricting the tote take to 6 per cent would have meant that its profit would be reduced to about £16,000 to £18,000 per year.
Flapping tracks and some of the small independent tracks, with fewer facilities, smaller crowds and frequently no tote, drew in much lower income and were in a far more financially precarious position. Those with the tote had the same income streams of the NGRS tracks and those without simply relied upon gate facilities and limited catering and drinking income. They, like the NGRS tracks, were also faced with losing about a third of their take through the 1934 Bill’s threat to restrict the number of meetings to two per week.
Despite the protestations of both the NGRS and the flapping tracks the 1934 Lotteries and Betting Act restricted greyhound tracks to two meetings per week and a 6 per cent tote take. The Act also set up the temporary ‘tracks of eight days’, which often attracted attendances of 1,000, and offered basic and cheap greyhound racing that attracted the poorer male gambler and challenged the flapping tracks for custom. Between 1934 and 1948 all the NGRC and flapping tracks operated their own business models on reduced levels of activity.
One can surmise from the above that the unrestricted financially ‘golden years’ of greyhound racing were over by the mid-1930s. Nevertheless for the rest of the 1930s greyhound tracks seemed to have operated efficiently and profitably until the Second World War, and they recovered well after the restrictions of 1939 to 1941 were eased (see chapter 2). The post-war recovery in 1945 and 1946 was impressive but the winter of 1946–47 and the 10 per cent Tote Pool Tax in January 1948 and the Bookmakers’ Pool Duty imposed undermined the finances of greyhound racing and contributed significantly to the decline in the sport from the late 1940s onwards. From that point onwards the financial position of all greyhound tracks fundamentally worsened because of the introduction of taxation. Table 3.4 indicates the low level of attendances at the PGTCO tracks.64 Whilst Group 1 and Group 2 tracks gained modest attendances they did at least have a tote take whilst those in Group 3 to Group 4 and must have been struggling to survive given that they did not have a tote, relied upon gate money and some refreshments, and may have had to pay the licence fee for bookmakers to attend.
Table 3.4 Attendances at the Provincial Greyhound Tracks Control Office track, 1949–50
| Group | Number of tracks | Average attendance | Attendances combined | Total annual attendances |
| 1 | 17 | 1,362 | 23,494 | 2,537,352 |
| 2 | 31 | 592 | 18,352 | 1,982,352 |
| 3 | 23 | 297 | 6,831 | 737,748 |
| 4 | ||||
| larger | 11 | 431 | 4,741 | 512,028 |
| smaller | 37 | 187 | 6,919 | 747,252 |
Source: HO 335/ 87, PGTCO Memorandum and evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, p. 7, para. 22.
In a survey conducted for the NGRS on sixty-seven tracks operating in 1948, and indicated in Table 3.5, it is suggested that there was only a 1 per cent return on capital for owners based on a return of net profit of 10 per cent over the previous ten years. Profitability in relation to capital was low, though it is not indicated how much impact there had been as a result of the new taxation of 1948.
| Total capital | £10,607,649 |
| Net profit after tax in last 10 years | £1,000,573 |
| Distributed in net dividends | £589,701 |
| Annual retained for the business | £411,816 |
| Percentage of earnings to capital employed | 9.4 per cent |
| Amount distributed in net | 5.5 per cent |
| Retained by the business | 3.9 per cent |
| Return on capital (per annum) | 1.0 per cent |
Source: HO 335/ 87, PGTCO Memorandum and evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, p. 7, para. 22.
There was, of course, immense variation between the large and small tracks as indicated in a selection of the distribution of the tote turnover returns for every British track operating in 1949. Eight of these are listed in Table 3.6. Yet another survey, based upon twenty-three of the 132 PGTCO flapping tracks in 1949 and 1950, suggested that they had a total income of £283,211, total expenses of £207,934, had then to pay government taxation, and received an aggregate profit of £18,161, just over £800 per track, which represented about a 2 per cent return on profit, implying that the average capital value of the tracks in the returns was just over £16,000.65
Table 3.6 The distribution of the tote turnover for eight NGRS tracks in Britain in 1949
| Track | Capacity | Tote stakes | Back to bettors | Pool Betting Duty | To operators |
| £ | £ | £ | £ | ||
Belle Vue |
25,000 | 1,970,808 | 1,655,289 | 197,079 | 118,440 |
Blackpool |
761,917 | 639,981 | 76,191 | 45,745 | |
Cardiff |
50,000 | 725,709 | 608,562 | 72,585 | 44, 562 |
Stratford (West Ham) |
118,899 | 99,875 | 11,807 | 7,207 | |
Walthamstow |
40,000 | 3,043,055 | 2,556,183 | 304,295 | 182,577 |
West Ham |
100,000 | 1,829,569 | 1,539,781 | 180,856 | 108,932 |
White City (Glasgow) |
25,000 | 797,184 | 668,372 | 79,578 | 49,234 |
White City (London) |
75,000 | 6,748,051 | 5,668,449 | 674,750 | 404,852 |
Source: HO 45/ 24210/ 817576/98 provides the tote turnover and how it was distributed for every greyhound track in Britain in 1949.
The result was that greyhound tracks became burdened with taxation. In 1950 it was calculated that the income of an average NGRS track per meeting was £1,007, made up of £332 gate money, £649 from the 6 per cent take from the tote, £12 from cars and £14 from the bookies.66 This compared badly with the government tax take of £1,592, which was made up of £189 Entertainment Tax (which all entertainment venues paid), £1,092 from Pool Betting Duty, and £311 from the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty. At 104 meetings per year an average track would have taken more than £104,000 per year after having paid taxes of £165,000 per year. Of the £104,000 about £85,000 to £86,000 would be taken by costs, thus leaving profit of about £18,000. Average crowds would appear to have been 2,000 to 2,500 and about twenty to thirty bookmakers would be in the stadium in competition to the tote.
The smaller tote flapping tracks operated on much lower profit margins – probably a third to a half of the larger tracks – and those flapping tracks that relied upon gate money alone from a few hundred customers, with possibly the Bookmakers’ Licence Duty to contribute to, must have been scratching a living. If these various estimates are anything near correct then greyhound racing was struggling financially.
The fact is that the costs of tracks varied over time depending upon government legislation and taxation which could seriously threaten their income. The City Greyhound and Sport Club, Bradford Ltd (1932–65) is indicative of the type of costs, if not the scale, typically faced by the flapping tracks. It operated 417 meetings between 15 August 1932 and the 27 June 1933 and incurred expenditure of £13,124 costs, about £32 per meeting. The main items were the proprietor’s return (£2,259), wages and salaries (£2,671), kennel maintenance (they had kennels on the Legrams Lane side of the track) (£2,349), track costs (£893), Entertainment Duty (£1,050), promoting and advertising (£1,494), heating and power (£473), registration fees (£310) and police duty (£307).67 In addition to this there was depreciation, sundries and other minor items. Apart from the obvious rake-off of the owners, this example indicates that a normal flapping track had sizeable wages bills, had to advertise itself, had costs connected with lighting and illumination, and a police bill of about fifteen shillings per meeting – which suggests two to three constables being on duty inside the track. Police presence remained the case, and thus a cost, at all tracks outside the Metropolitan area of London, where police attendance ceased in the mid-1930s. There is no specific indication of prize money for the Bradford track although this may have been hidden within the expenditure for promoting and advertising.
By the 1950s this picture had changed considerably at all NGRS tracks (Table 3.7). The major change was one of the cumulative 10 per cent tote tax on each race which meant that Tote Pool Duty was very high and that, as seen in an earlier survey, suggested that the government took 57 per cent, or more in the earlier estimate, of the money spent on the track. The average track might well have seen the owners taking 16 per cent or more of the total track income in the early 1930s. This was reduced substantially by the 1934 Act, and fell even more with the various taxes imposed on greyhound racing late in the 1940s, to around 7 per cent. The wages bill may well have fallen from around 19 per cent to 14 per cent. And the high level of taxation was probably the final straw for many tracks and, as already indicated, caused some to close in the early 1950s and thereafter.
Table 3.7 NGRS chart of average expenditure at NGRS tracks, 1950
| % | |
| Tote Tax | 44 |
| Proprietors profit after tax | 3.5 |
| Bookmakers’ Tax | 7.0 |
| Entertainment Duty | 6.0 |
| Prizes | 11 |
| Wages | 14 |
| General expenditure | 11 |
| Tax on proprietor’s profit | 3.5 |
| TOTAL | 100 |
Source: HO 335/77.
The returns on capital for greyhound tracks had clearly declined as a result of the 1934 Act. The old established business models were further challenged by government taxation in the 1940s.
Preparing for race day
There was a routine in mounting a race meeting, whether at the NGRS or flapping tracks. The greyhounds would have been subject to several trials before race days, where they would be graded upon their performances. At NGRS tracks the greyhounds would be housed in the kennels whereas at flapping tracks they would normally be transported in on the day of the trials. Grading was a crucial event, since a failure to do this accurately could lead to mismatches and raise issues of potential gambling corruption and fraud. The Racing Manager, Assistant Race Manager and others might then arrange races for the graded dogs at the meeting. Open races, such as the qualifiers for the Greyhound Derby, would be advertised through the NGRC Calendar and would be largely confined to NGRS company and private dogs. Race meetings would occur three times a week at NGRS tracks in the 1920s and early 1930s, but more for the flapping tracks that often offered Sunday racing in the early 1930s. After 1934 all tracks normally operated twice per week until the 1970s, except during wartime – the 104 days per year, although there was an allowance of four days for special meetings. On race days, all dogs, if they were not already in kennels, would be expected to be in the track kennels at least an hour before the race. At this stage their identification would be established through their registered identity books, something that occurred with all NGRS/NGRC dogs from the 1920s and which was later established by the flapping track organisations to prevent greyhounds running under different names at various tracks. At this stage all dogs would be examined by a veterinary surgeon, and housed under strict security. They would then, as a spectacle, be paraded before the race by handlers, sometimes to a fanfare of trumpets or bugles, and then the Steward would ensure that they were properly stalled (it has been known that dogs have been interfered with by dogs being put in the stalls the wrong way round). The hare driver would operate the hare, the stall automatically opened and the race run. Only after the race would the greyhounds be allowed out of the paddock.68
Initially, there was no fixed meeting times but in the 1920s most race meetings occurred in the afternoon except for the larger tracks until most tracks were properly illuminated with electric lights by the mid-1930s, after which meetings were increasingly switched to evenings, and, most importantly, Saturday night. From 1927 there were six races on the programme, a standard maximum laid down in 1927 by the NGRS/NGRC, and six dogs per race. The dogs were jacketed in different colours according to the trap number, in what rapidly became a standard system. The dog in the number one trap would wear a red jacket, whilst in trap two the jacket was blue, white in trap three, black in trap four, orange in trap five, and black and white stripes – like a sweet humbug – in trap six.69 Betting took place on the tote or with the bookmakers in the one, two or three betting enclosures. Tote betting was usually based upon selecting the first two past the post but bookmakers offered a variety of betting arrangements. The dogs were usually escorted on to the track – to music or a bugle fanfare – and placed in the traps. The hare would be released and dogs would race for between about twenty-eight and fifty seconds, depending upon the distance of the race, the result declared and the procedure repeated for the next race. The dog race times were vitally examined by bettors as a clue to form and the times of the placed dogs – the placed dogs being timed at 0.8 seconds per length behind the winner for information purposes.70
The majority of the races at NGRS tracks were graded and Brian Belton’s description of how this operated at the West Ham track is typical of what occurred.
Those tens of thousands of greyhounds whining and scrabbling in their tiny traps are waiting for what might be thought of as the basic sustenance of the sport. These races are one-lap affairs fought out by run-of-the-mill with a winning prize of not much more than £100, are graded races. The common racing greyhound is a grader. Whilst West Ham was in operation the standard of the graded event was judged by the size of the prize money that it offered. In the late 1970s races were graded by number, usually one to nine. Nine was for puppies and scrubbers and the fliers were designated as a one. It was the racing manager’s job to decide what grade of race any particular greyhound would compete in … The grade of the race is indicated in the track programme. Racing forms act as a barometer of each dog’s ability.71
It was the racing manager who assigned the dogs to the traps, deciding upon which tracks they would use, with railers on the inside and wide runners in traps five or six. Few owners liked their dogs placed in the ‘hell’ traps, three and four.
Such considerations added interest to the bettors who had to work out how the dogs ran, the times and performances of their previous races, and, if on the tote, which two dogs to place their money on. To the experienced bettor this was invaluable information but for those large numbers drawn for the spectacle only a few times per year it was, as will become evident in chapter 5, very much a gamble based upon names, favourite numbers, and the look of the dog. Yet to get to that stage a whole industry had to be constructed and maintained – an industry which could easily be thrown into disarray by the banning of the tote and the imposition of taxation.
Conclusion
Churchill’s ‘animated roulette boards’, the modern automated greyhound tracks, emerged rapidly during the inter-war years to meet the needs of the urban working class for new forms of leisure and a bright and glitzy ‘American night out’. Its development was largely financed from the pockets of the lower-middle class and small-scale businessmen, keen to benefit from the overnight success of the sport in the late 1920s. It was initially dominated by the NGRS, with its emphasis upon standardising the sport with a code of requirements based upon offering variety of high standard facilities, the tote, the proper grading of dogs, open races, and the conduct of the sport. However, many of the flapping tracks and their organisations did not meet the exacting standards of the NGRS/NGRC, and worked to a different business model on smaller tracks, many of them without tote betting facilities and dependent upon the bookmakers, gaining their income from entrance money and refreshments. Nonetheless, there were many features operating in the integrated world of greyhound racing which ensured that all greyhound tracks followed a general commonality of provision, even if some of these tracks cost £4,000 to build and others more than £50,000. The ground plans of the tracks, the circular track, the betting facilities, the pageant and the procedures of the sport shaped into familiar forms which all the patrons and bettors of the track would instantly recognise, even if the scale and size of provision varied enormously. All greyhound tracks paid municipal rates, provided income and offered employment for their local communities, and some certainly developed an affection within their local working-class communities despite the strong opposition religious and organisational resistance they faced throughout their existence. They were intricate and integrated, if varied, business ventures that operated freely in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the years of their most rapid and significant growth, but under restriction from 1934. In the late 1940s, greyhound racing faced discriminatory taxation which made its financial existence increasingly precarious. The immediate impact, after less than a quarter of a century of growth, was a swift decline in the sport in the late 1940s and early 1950s which became slower and steadier thereafter. A similar pattern of rapid growth and steady decline, caused by discrimination against the sport, can also be seen in other aspects of the infrastructure of greyhound racing, most obviously in dog breeding, dog training and dog racing, and ultimately in the fluctuating working-class interest in gambling on the sport.
Notes
1Huggins, ‘Everybody’s Going to the Dogs?’, 98–100.
2HO/45/15853/663794, the Review of Greyhound Racing in 1927 conducted in 1928.
3Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 32.
4HO 45/14222, particularly sub-file 99167/75, respectively.
5Ibid., quoting from the Dog Racing (Local Bill) debates in the House of Commons in March and April 1928.
6Daily News, 11 January 1929.
7Ibid.
8BT 31/32853, Company No. 223772.
9BT 31/29967/22947.
10HO 45/14222, Part 1, 499163/82.
11BT 31/29967/29939 and BT 31/29939/223947.
12BT 31/32853/223815.
13BT 31/32853/223825.
14The Times, 13 March 1928 on the Greyhound Racing Trust and the Daily Mail, 13 February 1928, although that report added to that list three extra companies who added £47,465 to the total making registered nominal capital £3,821,715.
15HO 45/15853/663794.
16HO 335/87, Provincial Greyhound Tracks Central Office, Memorandum on Totalisator Trading to the Royal Commission on Betting Lotteries and Gaming (Chairman H. Willink (1949–51)), Part 2, p. 7. The PGTCO survey was based upon the returns of twelve Group 1, nineteen Group 2, six Group 3 and ten Group 4 tracks. That is forty-eight tracks out of a total of about 119 tracks at the time of the submission in 1950.
17HO 45/14709/512758/28.
18BT 31/30184/229736.
19BT 31/32853/223815.
20BT 31/32853/223825.
21BT 31/29960/224377.
22BT 31/30016/225556.
23Evening News (London), 30 April 1928.
24scottisharchitects.org.uk, ‘Dictionary of Scottish Architects’, DSA Architects Report, 28 December 2017.
25HLG 131/339, suggests that there are sixteen stadiums but excludes Wembley and lists the acreage of others as follows: Catford 4.8, Clapham 6.27, Crayford 13.47, Dagenham 4.19, Hackney 15.8, Harringay 24.34, New Cross 8.58, Park Royal 4.13. Romford 5.0, Stamford Bridge 11.21, Walthamstow 7.59, Wandsworth 7.41, West Ham 16, White City 13.48 and Wimbledon 10.06.
26Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 49.
27Ibid.
28Much of this information is gathered from The Greyhound Year Book, 1933 and from the numerous websites on the various greyhound tracks.
29The Greyhound Year Book, 1933, p. 73.
30CUST 49/4251.
31HO 335/77 NGRS evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries, in 1951, Appendix K.
32HO 335/87, evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, in 1951, p. 7.
33Ibid., pp. 16–17. On page 17 there is a suggestion that there were ten totalisator closures during the inter-war years, thirteen between 1945 and 1948, and that another nine had never really taken off, a total of thirty-two closures before the Tote Pool Tax was introduced. This is almost certainly referring to tracks that had been opened and will not include the many greyhound companies who never opened a track or closed its track shortly after opening.
34HO 45/15853/663794/31, deputation of the NGRS to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, led by Lord Askwith, 23 November 1933, pp. 14–15 of a twenty-three-page report.
35HO 45/15843/659060/201, letter from Major Rt. Hon. Ormsby-Gore MP to Sir John Gilmour. Home Secretary; HO 45/15853/663794/31, report on a deputation from the NGRS, led by Lord Askwith, to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, 23 November 1933.
36The Greyhound Year Book 1933, p. 8.
37HO 45/15853/663794/31.
38HO 45/15843/6509060/184, a letter sent by H. D. Black, Managing Director of the Bell Punch Company Limited, dated 1 January 1933.
39HO 45/15843/659060/201. Letter from Major Rt. Hon. Ormsby-Gore PP to Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, 25 November 1933.
40Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 292, 27 June 1934, col. 1157, evidence of T. Williams, Labour MP for Don Valley.
41Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 94, no. 93, 15 November 1934.
42Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 292, 27 June 1934, col. 1160.
43HO 335/87, evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries, in 1951, p. 7, para. 22.
44The Greyhound Racing Year Book 1933, p. 73.
45HLG 52/1422 contains several rough drawings of track layout.
46Ibid.
47Ibid.
48CUST 49/339 contains some rough sketches of a number of greyhound tracks, including the new Spennymoor Greyhound Track opened on 17 June 1951.
49HO 335/11, evidence of the Wimbledon Greyhound Race Track to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51).
50John Bull, 8 February 1933.
51HO 335/87 evidence of PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (1949–51).
52HO 45/15853/663794/29, in a letter to the Home Secretary dated 24 January 1933 from W. Drewit, Chairman and Hugh Watkins, Vice Chairman, of the Brighton and Hove Stadium.
53The Race Managers and the Assistant Race Managers were specialists. The first race manager at Belle Vue was Major-General T. Anderson and the same role was undertaken at Wimbledon by Con Stevens, a farmer who later became the responsible for helping to train Mick the Miller.
54HO 45/14709/659060, memorandum on greyhound racing, p. 3.
55INF 9/948.
56LAB 2/1994/Sand/E1228/2/lews3e4937.
57Ibid., a letter from J. J. Usall complaining to Sir Philip Dawson MP of the evening employment of a civil servant.
58LAB 2/1994/Sand/E1228/2/lews3e4937.
59HO 15853/663794/4, in a letter from the NGRS to the Home Secretary, 30 June 1933.
60Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 94, no. 97, 13 November 1934, col. 1920. Buchanan was attacking those supporting the legalisation of the greyhound tote.
61HO 335/87, memorandum of the PGTCO to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (Willink) 1949–51, p. 8, paragraph 25. There were eleven Group 1 returns amounting to £22,827, an average of 2,025; twenty-four Group 2 returns amounting to £30,656, an average of £1,533; twelve Group 3 at £9,513 averaging £793; and nineteen Group 4 amounting to £7,431 and amounting to £391 average.
62Fifth Report, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 19, no. 97, col. 120, 15 November 1934.
63HO 45/24210/817576/98 provides a broad financial breakdown of every greyhound track operating in Britain for 1949. HO 45/16319/673073/190, NGRS evidence presented to the Home Office in November 1934 in relation to the Betting and Lotteries Bill being discussed in Parliament in which the suggestion was to restrict to holding meetings to two per week and the owners’ take from the Tote Pool to 6 per cent.
64HO 335/87, PGTCO Memorandum and evidence to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, Final Report (1949–51), p. 3.
65Ibid.
66HO 335/77, evidence of the NGRS to the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming (1949–51).
67HO 45/15853/663794/14, City Greyhound and Sports Club, Bradford Ltd (Legrams Lane), letter 17 October 1933.
68BS3/26, evidence of the BGRC (now a united body of most of the surviving greyhound tracks) to the Royal Commission on Gambling (1976–8), Cmnd 7200, better known as the Rothschild Commission.
69Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, pp. 11, 14, 35, 46, 60, 74.
70HO 45/15853/663794.
71Belton, When West Ham went to the Dogs, p. 37.