Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Friday 24 April 1903
A Denaby Miner’s Sovereign Bet
Yesterday, at Pontefract, John Martin, bookmaker, Carlisle, was charged on four separate accusations of stealing money by welshing. One of the complainants was a Conisbrough miner, named James Casey, who said he put a sovereign on Magdala for the second race, at the Pontefract meeting, at two to one. Prisoner disputed the bet. Immediately, said Casey, the crowd pulled him off his stool, tore his clothes, ripped his pockets up, stole his watch and chain, and took away his bag and book. He ran away, but was caught, and locked up.
Mr. Lowden (who defended): Where are you working? Casey: Oh, we’ve been on strike 43 weeks, where I’m working.—Mr. Lowden: And yet you can afford to come to Pontefract and make sovereign bets?—Casey: Well, you see, we get a bit of strike pay.
Mr. Lowden submitted that prisoner would have paid all legitimate debts, had not the crowd, as Casey had said, robbed him of the chance.—Prisoner, however, was fined £1 and costs in each case (total £8 0s. 6d.) or four months’ hard labour.