MOSTLY out of pubs, Illegal SP (Starting Price) bookmakers operated for much of the 20th century, particularly from the 1930s until the introduction of the Totalizator Agency Board (TAB) in the 1960s.
An SP Bookie (Starting Price Bookmaker) refers to a bookmaker who offers bets based on the official final odds—the “Starting Price” (SP)—at the moment a horse or greyhound race begins. This price is determined by an average of on-course bookmaker odds, often used when bettors do not take a fixed price earlier.
These bookies were a ubiquitous part of pub culture, operating to meet demand for betting from people who could not attend racetracks, often in a “cat-and-mouse” game with police.
Because legal betting was restricted to on-course bookmakers, SP bookies filled the gap, allowing customers to place bets on horse races, trots, and sports directly from the pub. They offered fixed odds at the horse’s final, or “starting price,” which was typically determined by the odds at the main racecourse.
Before the legal off-course betting era, SP bookies utilized radio, telephone, and sometimes coded signaling to access real-time race results and price updates.
They were particularly popular in pubs during the Great Depression and post-war era, providing a means for working men to gamble in smaller amounts, often on credit. Slates were sometimes used for writing SP bets, so that the bets could be quickly and easily wiped out if gaming police raided the bookmaker’s headquarters. They often operated out of the public bar, near the back yard pub toilets, or in back rooms and nearby laneways of pubs.
Central Western Daily, November 22, 1949:
Leonard Raymond Hickey, pastry cook, was fined £20 at Orange Court yesterday on a charge of S.P. betting in the parlor of the Metropolitan Hotel.
Sergeant Grebert said he entered the Metropolitan Hotel at 3.20 p.m. on Saturday and saw Hickey sitting at a table in the parlor. He was making entries in a small notebook.
Bets in the book ranged from 1 shilling each way to £3. Stipendiary Magistrate, Mr. H. G. Cobley, told Hickey the minimum fine for the offence was £20, and because it was his first conviction he would only impose the minimum fine.
To avoid police arrest, SP bookies used a lookout, commonly known as a ‘cockatoo’, who would warn of police approaching the hotel.
The illegality of SP betting meant the industry was often tied to bribery, where bookmakers paid local police to look the other way.
The Sydney Sun, September 24, 1939:
S.P. BETS AGAIN IN FAVOR
POLICE KEPT ON WAR WORK
Although the police betting squad recently drove almost all S.P. bookmakers off the streets and out of hotels, to-day illegal betting is rampant in city and suburban hotels, shops and back lanes.
POLICE have been needed for wartime emergency work and have little or no time to deal with S.P. bookmakers.
At an hotel on the, North Shore the industry is carried on openly. Bookies stand in the street, nearby, with books and betting slips, taking bets even from strangers.
In a lane within the city boundaries people congregate in hundreds on race days, and money passes freely. It is a dead-end lane, and affords excellent cover from the police, as P.D. cars cannot get near it without ample warning from the S.P. sentries.
Betting in bars is less prevalent than it used to be, but near one hotel in the Eastern Suburbs punters wait in a queue to back their fancies. Some of the old hands, however, remain cautious.
In one shop in the Eastern Suburbs the bookmaker sits in an inner room with his papers and cash. Three doors have to be passed before a visitor can reach this room. His runners take the bets to him.
Two ‘cockatoos’ keep watch in the street, and at the slightest sign of a police raid the word flies to the shop.
Recently a P.D. car pulled up In an adjacent street, and an individual in a sweater and without coat or hat got out and made his way to the shop. He purchased a packet of chewing gum and stayed a quarter of an hour conversing on the war and the weather with the proprietor. But his vigil was useless.
No punters entered the shop, the ‘cockatoos’ had warned them off. Suburban. S.P. bookies handle from £300 to £600 on race days.
In hundreds of suburban shops transactions on a lesser, scale are carried on with neighboring housewives.
There is brisk S.P. business on dog races. A popular plunge on these events, also, is the ‘sealed double’ and ‘sealed treble’. A ticket in a sealed envelope is sold for six pence. The ticket bears the box numbers of dogs and a list of prizes. If the purchaser strikes a winner or a second or third he draws a reward. If he gets two or three winners the prize is substantial. If the sale of the tickets realises £25, the prizes amount to £15, and the promoter makes £10 proflt.
Column 8, Sydney Morning Herald, September 10, 1954:
Recently, Detective-Sergeant “Bumper” Farrell of the C.I.B. was in Island Bend seeking some wanted men among the Snowy project workers.
While he was in the canteen a starting-price bookie approached him and said: “What’ll it be, mate — dogs or trots?”
“Neither,” replied the sergeant, “I never touch them. My name’s ‘Bumper’ Farrell from the Sydney C.I.B. I’m here on holidays, but…”
But the bookie didn’t stay to learn what the but was. The local lads, who may be given to exaggeration, say he beat Landy’s time.
By the 1930s, it was commonly noted that if a pub didn’t have an SP bookie, it was likely not economically viable.
The rise of the TAB in the early 1960s significantly reduced the prevalence of SP bookies, offering a legal alternative, though many illegal operators shifted to telephone betting for a time.
The Sydney Daily Mirror reports on October 8, 1954:
S.P. Bookie hangs up his bag
Bet seldom and bet wisely — or don’t bet at all.
That’s Fred Fitzpatrick’s advice to punters.
Fred (72) is one of Paddington’s best -known S.P. bookies. He retired yesterday after being fined £30 for betting in a house in Glenmore Rd., Paddington. It was his ninth bet-ting conviction — and his last. Fred, a World War 1 veteran, who’s known in Paddington as “The Digger,” told Central Court:
“I’m turning it in for good. “It’s getting too hard these days for S.P. bookies,” Fred said today. And if he could live his life over again, would he still choose to be a bookie? Fred straightened his bright floral tie, blinked his blue eyes, touched his peaked cloth cap and said: “Yes — but only on things that are strictly legal. Like oil shares and gold mines…”
Fred said the flood of advice from race broad-casters and sports-writers made a bookie’s life one of strife these days.
The Mirror asked him: Well, why are bookies still managing to eat?
“It’s the punters’ fault,” he said.
“They rush in and back any thing. They should only bet when the odds are on their side.”
Before the Mirror reporter left Fred’s little shop (it was once a library) in Glenmore Road, he told the secret of why he became a bookie.
“A bookie 40 years ago welshed on a bet,” he confided.
“I determined I wouldn’t be caught again — but that’s what I thought.
“The police made things too hot for me.”
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