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ENGLISH LAW AND THE PARIMUTUEL Someone wrote to The Sportsman last week to agk if there were any chance that the parimu tuel would be introduced into England or whether its employment was a penal offense says the Lon ¬ don Referee The question has been tried and decided illegally Years ago a parimutuel ma ¬ chine was set up in the public part of Wolver hampion course the men who were working it were arrested and convicted under the vagrant act on the ground that the machine was an instrument for wagering on a game of chance The learned JudRe could not get out of his learned head a rooted idea that a parimutuel was the same sort of a Ililng as a roulette board or a teetotum table that iu fact anything but pure chance governed its nitrations Of course it is nothing of the kind No one knows more about this subject than Mr H Stuttleld and he declared that the convic ¬ tion was wholly wrong and that there is no law under which the workers of the machine could pos ¬ sibly attacked 1 think it highly probable that wiuie enterprising race course manager may be in ¬ clined to put the matter to the test testA A reason for doing so is that the novelty would be attractive a reason against is that bookmakers on whose support race courses to a not inconsider ¬ able extent depend naturally would not like it and our enterprising race course manager would have to consider what was best f r the interests of bis company No doubt a certain number of men would use ihe machine instead of betting with the ring and the readymoney men would he most affected because there would be an Idea that the mutiltl paid better prices than the layers I hap hapEen to know that if the late Mr Charles Perkins Een art lived a little lonecr there would have been a parimutuel at Gosforth Park He liked the idea of it and was prepared to set one up and stand to be shot at if anvbody wanted to shoot at him being convinced that Mr Stutfield was right iu his Interpretation of the law It is quite on the cards that somebody else will try
