Who remembers the Bookies runner

My dad was a bookies runner,he would collect from houses and his work place (William Greens ecclesfield) I would follow 100 yds behind him carrying the bets,so if he got stopped

he didnt have anything on him

Come to think of it my Dad never paid us a penny for doing his dirty work

Hi Everyone and apologises for interupting your forum.

My name is Mark Ferguson and I am a researcher working on a new series looking at life in the 1950s, due to be broadcasted on BBC1 throughout the UK in March 2012. The programme is a celebratory hark back to the time using first hand interviews and our rich BBC archive.

One of the themes we are looking at is Leisure and we want to cover Betting and the Bookies, in particular the Street Bookies. I'd love to talk to anyone who was a street bookie or a runner.

We really want to hear about their memories, and really how life was back in the 50s.

I am also trying to find some people who raced pigeons or dogs in the 50s too to share their story.

If you think you could help, please do get in touch, send me a message or an email to [email protected]

Look forward to hearing from you.

Mark Ferguson

BBC Northern Ireland

I remember the bookies in the steelworks taking bets, I often wondered how they held a job down spending so much time with the racing bets.

Often when their bets became a liability they would have to leave the works to make phone calls to lay bets off to other bookies.

Happy Days! PopT

I remember my grandad ran for a bookies.As a shift foreman he was ideally placed to circulate and collect the monies.His brother in law opened the first turf office in our area.

yer my dad was one at the bottom of haywood road at pitsmoor he would stand on the corner taking bets from punters in the pub across the road it got him a few pints doing it god bless him

Just found this particular thread, by thinking about my Nan and her daily trips to Lol Banks betting shop in Catcliffe with a big handfull of tanner bets from our street and surrounding streets. She never actually went into the betting shop ,which took up a whole section of the viaduct between the road and the river, rather she went to the family bungalow behind the shop. She would spend at least an hour every day there was racing with Mrs Banks, whose famous son was Gordon , drinking tea and gossiping. My Nan liked a flutter as well and it was her that got me interested..in the summer of 1961, a few weeks before I left school, I dropped by at her house on my way to school and told her to put me a bob each way on Psidium.The two shillings was the last of my paper round wages. She tried every thing she could to stop me, saying things like Lester Piggot had turned down the mount. Anyway it won at 66-1 and I didn,t know until I got home. I got 4 pounds 10 shillings, thought I was a millionaire lol. Put in to perspective, my first wage about 6 weeks later was under 3 pounds

I would have thought that bookies runners would be sort of 'redundant' when betting shops were legalised around 1961. Then they would be sort of messenger/collectors like the pools people, which was quite legal. The legitimate betting offices (no public allowed inside) that were around previous to this, were called 'Turf Accountants.'

Not a runner in the true sense, but as a kid used to "run" the bets from our house around the lump to the local bookie.

The procedure was really simple and trusting.

You would wrap half a crown in a piece of paper, with the words "1,2,3 Prince Polo" and a short nom de plume, like "Ranger", and that was it!

Then later just collect (or not)

I would have thought that bookies runners would be sort of 'redundant' when betting shops were legalised around 1961. Then they would be sort of messenger/collectors like the pools people, which was quite legal. The legitimate betting offices (no public allowed inside) that were around previous to this, were called 'Turf Accountants.'

Even when they were legal, they still took "homemade, scribbled " bets .Even as late as1969 I have put bets on at work with a bookie's agent "runner". My nan never went in the betting shop, the bookies wife took them over. My grandmother was not doing anything illegal.