New york Lottery Baggage

Cultural Baggage

The prolific newspaper advertisements and articles gave notice of athletic challenges (including jumping, vaulting and cycling), and reporters took delight in promoting a contest, publicizing the sums lost and won, and bemoaning the scams that were unraveled. The sport was thus kept very much in the public eye. Wilfred Richards, for example, who was spotted by a spectator taking a short-cut during a wagered two mile race through Hagley Park in April 1876, was described by the Lyttelton Times as 'shameful' and 'an affront to all those who trust in the British notions of fair play'. Auckland's 'Gaslight Sports', where bookmakers took bets on races from 100 yards to seven miles, were run in Khyber Pass for more than 30 years. During a later campaign to banish public betting, Prime Minister Joseph Ward made particular reference to the 'degradation' of these sports operating in the centre of the city.

Gambling Possibilities

Pedestrianism, like other individual-based sports, flourished as long as it offered gambling possibilities. It engendered a color and glamour among enthusiastic spectators, who relished the chance to make money in the unregulated environment. After the passage of the Gaming and New York Lottery act in 1881, professional sport and its gambling sub-culture became marginally more scrutinized but with little effect. Promoters of professional sports ignored the new legislation with impunity, in sharp contrast to Chinese and pub gamblers who were pursued with vigor. This hypocrisy was graphically illustrated in March 1883 when the Lyttelton Times reported the fining of Chinese fan-tan players after a raid in Sydenham, immediately above the story of a pedestrian challenge for £100 between W. S. Fagan of Christchurch and W. J. Burke of Dunedin for the 'Championship of the Colony'. It was not until late in the following decade, when a burgeoning middle-class campaign attacked the wickedness of professional sport, that evangelical opposition to it grew in strength.Values associated with the Protestant work ethic-labor, dedication and commitment-were best encapsulated with the later rise of rugby football. The growth of team sports overcame social barriers by promoting mate ship and egalitarianism, and fostered both regional identity and international recognition. But the predominance of individual sports and their associated gambling took a long time to fade. Professional sport and the 'scams' associated with it-the fixing of odds, the 'ringing in' of outsiders, the racing under assumed names and the turning in of false performances to improve handicaps for future races-began to wither only with the public demise of bookmakers in the early part of the twentieth century.

Race-Track Gambling

Along with billiards, horse racing was the one early indulgence that broke the bonds of social stratification. As in Britain, it was the wealthy who were involved in its early organization: merchants, run holders and professional men dominated racing club committees. South Island sheep station owners set out private courses and provided their districts with regular race-days. At a typical race-meeting, landowners applauded from the enclosures and common folk from the front rail, although gentry-owned thoroughbreds did sometimes race the nags of local shopkeepers. There was a well-conducted concourse of colonials and transients, with plenty of goodwill, joie de vivre, drinking and betting.
New Zealand's first recorded race-meeting was in the Bay of Islands in 1835. The first race in Wellington was a hurdle event at the back of Te Aro Pa as part of the first Anniversary Day celebrations on 25 January 1841. Gambling entrepreneurs soon found their opportunity. Before Wellington's first big meeting, along Petone Beach on 20 October 1842, bookmakers prowled the streets and accosted citizens in hotels, while horse-owners and relatives organized their own private New York lottery sweepstakes. The sport flourished. In Auckland the military garrison was the first body to conduct horse races, using troop horses and its officers as officials. Horse racing was also popular with Maori, who purchased unwanted horses from Europeans and were usually given one race at meetings, sometimes for whine. Later, Maori established their own racing clubs.