Evening Star Newspaper, June 2, 1929, Page 113

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 2, 1929—PART- 7. This Is About the Odds in the Calcutta Seoeepstakes, One of the World’s Greatest Gambles, Which Cul- minates Wednesday in the Running of the British Classic at E /)soni Dozons. BY C. PATRICK THOMPSON. HEN the stewards of Royal Cal- cutta Turf Ciub decided the other day that the first prize in the world famous Calcutta Derby sweepstake had grown too big for any one person to win, millions of hopes of collecting arcund $1,500,000 from an original investment of $4 were severely curbed. It is more or less assured henceforward that when the sweep closes three or four or even more numbers will be drawn in Calcutta against each of the Derby runners, so that there will be as many tickets for the winning horse, and the enormous prizes of the past—Ilast year the win= ning ticket was worth nearly $1,300,000—in the future will be but a memory over which gam- blers may lick dry lips. However, $500,000 or so is not to be sneezed at, especially when the chances of winning the same are doubled or even tripled: and excite- ment is not likely to be much diminished in consequence when, next Wednesday afternoon, a bunch of quadrupeds bestridden by miniature bipeds set off to see which can put its nose first past the white post at the end of the long shaven grass race track on Epsom Downs in the fair county of Surrey, England. A few minutes after the latter event occurs, the world will know the name of the horse which has won the blue riband of the English turf in the greatest classic race of its young life; and the holders of the winning numbers in the world’s biggest sweep will also be made aware that the gods of luck have beamed broadly upon them! The Calcutta sweep is almost as old as the famous British Derby itself, inaugurated by an ancestor of the millionaire race-horse-owning ear] of that name; and if there are old English families impoverished today because a reckless torebear risked the family shirt on “a certainty” in the Derby and lost, there are also new fami- Mes living in affluence because one of their members casually bought a Calcutta sweep ticket or a share therein and pulled off the big- gest gamble horse racing offers anywhere on earth. ORIGINALLY organized by the club—from whose members alone tickets in the first instance may be purchased—for the benefit of the little British colony in the great center of Anglo-Indian trade, the growth and quickening of communications has caused the sweep to mushroom mightily, until today the $4 shares are blown by the winds of chance into every corner of the globe. Every member of the Cal- cutta Turf Club today is the hub of an informal world-wide circle of sweep share buyers. There is no rake-off. The only incentive to sell—apart from any tickle a man’s vanity gets from sitting in at the winning of a Calcutta sweep prize—is the long chance of handling a winning ticket, which means that the seller is entitled to 10 per cent of whatever the ticket wins. There are two separate and distinct high temperature periods in connection with the sweep; the draw and the race. The draw takes place in the Turf Club in Calcutta the week end before race day. In one large glass barrel all the tickets bear- ing the numbers taken (to stop trickery and forgery and also to keep on the right side of the anti-gambling law of 1922 you get a number instead of a ticket these days) are placed. The sweep is pronounced closed. The barrel is pad- locked and sealed in the presence of the club stewards, who take charge of the key. The names of all the horses entered for the Derby go into the second barrel. Cranks revolve the barrel. Before each num- ber and each horse is drawn the cranks are turned, so that all the tickets of howses and numbers are well mixed. As each number and each horse is drawn the number and the name of the horse or blank is noted by the tellers. So few horses, so many numbers! In 100,- 000 offices and 200,000 homes, in clubhouses on the edge of all the seaways from Capetown to Frisco and from Singapore to Shanghai, around telegraph posts in desert and jungle stations, aboard every ship equipped with radio, millions tensely wait to hear the result of the big draw. Have their $4 gone up the spout? Or are they going to produce a one-in-forty or fifty thance of picking a fortune out of the blue sky? THE club itself is notoriously luckless. Its members seldom draw a horse, much less pick a winner. Indeed, this is one of those rare occasions when fate seems to take an impish delight in giving the lucky rich man a miss and picking out the poor or obscure per- 100,000 to One Excitement is likely to be intense when the famous race is run at Epsom Downs. son whose touch has never yet turned anything to gold. ‘Two years back the winner was Miss Gwen Thomas, a girl insurance clerk of humble birth, working in a Liverpool office. She won around $1,000,000. A week after the news of her dazzling for- tune, the newspapers had a second sensation. Miss Gwen Thomas had disappeared. A clam- orous press sought her, suspecting a kidnaping or, maybe, a romantic elopement. But the story petered out in a little villa in a London suburb, The little new-rich girl had not succumbed to a fortune hunter, or taken to pearls, gigolos and the night life. Frightened by an avalanche of begging letters, offers of marriage, telegrams offering unparalelled opportunities for the profitable employment of her capital, and per- sonal calls, she had fled to an aged and be- loved aunt, to the quiet and simple life. Mix-ups often occur. One of the queerest happened in 1923, when every one was mystified by simultaneous reports giving different names for the winning ticket. A Capt. A. A. Poole was sald to have won, and so was a Dublin shop assistant named Edith O'Dwyer, who was named in a cablegram from Calcutta. ‘The trouble turned out to be due to the economical sender of the Calcutta cable, who had clipped a word from the message. Miss O’Dwyer had won a Calcutta sweep, but it was the Marconi Calcutta Service Derby Sweep which, not for the first time, had been con- fused with the Calcutta Turf Club Sweep. As Miss O’'Dwyer collected $300,000 from her Marconi Sweep, however, she was not too much upset. The Calcutia Turf Club Sweep also has been occasionally confused with the Stock Exchange Derby Sweep, which is conducted in London and which this year was said to involve & total of $5,000,000—within a million of the Cal- cutta sweep funds. The amount involved in these and other huge British gambles is said to be about $20,000,000. In the days when tickets were issued there were endless instances of people carelessly losing or mislaying them. On the morning of Derby day, 1921, Capt. Thomas Jones, retired officer of the Royal Naval Reserve, was pro- moted to place of assistant marine superintend- ent at the Union Castle Wharf at Blackwall, and cleaned up his old office. Shortly before 4 o'clock the same day a friend telephoned and told him he held the winning ticket in the Cal- cutta sweep. “Good Lord!” exclaimed Capt. Jones. *I don’t know what I've done with the damn thing.” He had bought the ticket “just for the fun of the thing,” and had forgotten it. He thought he must have torn it up with some old papers. The search that followed in ash cans, dusty cupboards and waste paper baskets was terrific. At length the captain thought of looking among an armful of old papers he had crammed into a portmanteau. And there, dog-eared and dirty, was the little open sesame to the Calcutta treasure cave. LAS’I‘ year the gigantic first prize was won by an Indian: That story casts a spotlight on the fantastic web which gets woven in the chancy passage of tickets from hand to hand in the period between the time the club says “Go!” to its members, and the breathless mo- ment when the nose of the first horse passes the white post on Epsom Downs. When the horse’s name flashed to London, lists were consulted in clubs and newspaper offices, and the first report was that a Mr. H. W. Webb, an Englishman, had scooped the prize of $1,250,000. Mr. Webb could not be found. Where was he? He had gone to sea. The ship was known, the date of its departure, its destination, and it was pursued by cable and radio. The scent was hot at Colombo, but failed at Singapore. The ship, in fact, was between the two ports. She carried no wireless. A news hungry world went to bed without knowing whether Mr. ‘Webb still had the lucky number or had sold the whole or part of it to friends. Mr. Webb arrived at Singapore. From there he broadcast to the world that he no longer had the winning number. It belonged to Abrahim Dawood Kazi, a Mahometan timber merchant of Bombay, for whom he had ob- tained a hundred tickets. Abrahim Dawood Kazi was chased down. Here enters one of those whimsical caprices of fate which happen so much oftener in real life than in fiction— authors not daring to be so improbable. Ninety-nine of Mr. Kagzi's hundred tickets were in the names of individual members of the Kazi family, but the bundredth and win- ning ticket had been divided up. Half be- Jonged to Kazi's baby; the other half had been resold to Charlie Murray and A. Rosirio, forc- men in a firm with whose officials Mr. Kazi, having business dealings with the firm, desired to stand well. So far, so good—although not so good from Kagi’'s viewpoint. Enter now cemplication in the dusky person of a co-religionist of Mr. Kazi’s, one Abbas, employed by a Bombay ship- ping firm. Abbas had bought a quarter share in one of Kazi's tickets. (That merchant seems to have bought his sweep numbers like a box of Christmas cigars—to hand around.) Sunk in the fatalism of the East, Abbas had taken it for granted that the gods of luck could not smile on him, and since the race he had not looked at his number. But when the name of Kazi cropped up he hastily dug it n the Derby KpRER out and found that what he held was a quartex; share in the gold mine. > Once roused, Abbas showed himself a mi of action. He approached the timber merchant, who handed him the Eastern equivalent to the Western maxim about there being many a slip twixt cup and lip. In short, Mr. Kazi told Mr. Abbas there was nothing doing. The une fortunate Abbas then discovered that a Cal- cutta sweep ticket represented merely by & number is an intangible thing. THINKING that he at least could prove the transaction, he set forth to file suit in the high eourt, but overlooked the fact that the same law which forces the Calcutta Turf Club to substitute numbers for tickets operates also to place any transaction respecting the said number outside the law. Although probably every one connected with the court, from the judges down, had bought their numbers and cursed their luck, the court officially frowned upon the distracted Mr. Abbes and refused to admit his suit. ‘Then Abbas did the right thing. As a sports- man he appealed to the sportsmen of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club. The club suspended pay- ment. The stewards went into private session, studied the facts, the allegations, also the prob- abilities, having regard to the persons con- cerned, and Abbes got judgment to the tune of $75,000. ¢ So out of his winnings of $1,250,000 Kasi had to pay $585,000 to the two foremen, $75,000 to Abbas and $125,000 (his 10 per cent under sweep rules as the seller of the ticket to Sije winner) to the Englishman Webb. HONEYMOON PAIR $1.00 a W eek An exquisite diamond engagement ring of 18kt hand-pierced white gold and a wedding band set with 3 lovely diamonds. Both for $49.75. Other Combination Sets Up to $2,00—Liberal Terms. WEI.RYMPAY - AMERKAS LARGEST CREDIT JEWELRY ORGANIZATION