[Anon.], ‘One-Sided Law’, Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts (1854)

Readers of the London newspapers will have observed by the police reports, that an energetic effort has lately been made to put down ‘betting-houses.’ These establishments are usually public-houses in crowded neighbourhoods, the resort of what are called ‘sporting characters,’ who meet together for the purpose of drinking and betting on the result of horse-races. In Drury Lane, Long-Acre, and there-abouts, there are some well-known houses of this kind; and such is the popular mania for betting, that on the occasion of important races at Epsom, Ascot, and Newmarket, crowds collect about the doors, to await intelligence from the scene of action. At these times, the public-houses in question would be crammed to suffocation, but for the precautionary measure of charging sixpence for admission to the betting-room ‘up stairs,’ where the grand conclave, with betting-books before them, sit at the receipt of custom – that is, administering loss and disappointment on wonderfully easy terms to the silly gulls who venture within the precincts.