c. 38) provides that "Every person playing or betting by way of

wagering or gaming on any street, road, highway or other open and public place, or in any open place to which the public have, or are permitted to have, access, at or with any table or instrument of gaming, or any coin, card, token or other article used as an instrument or means of gaming, at any game or pretended game of chance, shall be deemed a rogue and vagabond." This act amended a prior act of 1868, passed to repress the practice of playing pitch and toss in the streets, which had become a public nuisance in the colliery districts. The powers of making by-laws for the peace, order and good government of their districts, possessed by municipal boroughs--and since 1888 by county councils--and extended in 1899 to the new London boroughs, have in certain cases been exercised by making by-laws forbidding any person to "frequent or use any street or other public place, on behalf either of himself or any other person, for the purpose of bookmaking, or betting, or wagering, or agreeing to bet or wager with any person, or paying, or receiving or settling bets." This and similar by-laws have been held valid, but were found inadequate, and by the Street Betting Act 1906 (6 Edw. VII. c. 43), passed by the efforts of the late Lord Davey, it is made an offence for any person to frequent or loiter in a street or public place on behalf of himself or of any other person for the purpose of bookmaking or betting or wagering or agreeing to bet or wager or paying or receiving or settling bets. The punishment for a first offence is fine up to L10, for a second fine up to L20, and the punishment is still higher in the case of a third or subsequent offence, or where the accused while committing the offence has any betting transaction with a person under the age of sixteen. The act does not apply to ground used for a course for horse-racing or adjacent thereto on days on which races take place; but the expression public place includes a public park, garden or sea-beach, and any unenclosed ground to which the public for the time have unrestricted access, and enclosed places other than public parks or gardens to which the public have a restricted right of access with or without payment, if the owners or persons controlling the place exhibit conspicuously a notice prohibiting betting therein. A constable may arrest without warrant persons offending and seize all books, papers, cards and other articles relating to betting found in their possession, and these articles may be forfeited on conviction. Besides the above provision against betting with infants the Betting and Loans (Infants) Act 1892, passed at the instance of the late Lord Herschell, makes it a misdemeanour to send, with a view to profit, to any one known by the sender to be an infant, a document inviting him to enter into a betting or wagering transaction. The act is intended to protect lads at school and college from temptation by bookmakers.

Wagering.

We must now turn from the public law with respect to gaming to the treatment of bets and wagers from the point of view of their obligation on the individuals who lose them. A wager may be defined as "a promise to give money or money's worth upon the determination or ascertainment of an uncertain event" (Anson, _Law of Contract_, 11th ed., p. 206). The event may be uncertain because it has not happened or because its happening is not ascertained; but to make the bargain a wager the determination of the event must be the sole condition of the bargain. According to the view taken in England of the common law, bets or wagers were legally enforceable, subject to certain rules dictated by considerations of public policy, e.g. that they did not lead to immorality or breach of the peace, or expose a third person to ridicule.[1] The courts were constantly called upon to enforce wagers and constantly exercised their ingenuity to discover excuses for refusing. A writer on the law of contracts[2] discovers here the origin of that principle of "public policy" which plays so important a part in English law. Wagering contracts were rejected because the contingencies on which they depended tended to create interests hostile to the common weal. A bet on the life of the emperor Napoleon was declared void because it gave one of the parties an interest in keeping the king's enemy alive, and also because it gave the other an interest in compassing his death by unlawful means. A bet as to the amount of the hop-duty was held to be against public policy, because it tended to expose the condition of the king's revenue to all the world. A bet between two hackney coachmen, as to which of them should be selected by a gentleman for a particular journey, was void because it tended to expose the customer to their importunities. When no such subtlety could be invented, the law, however reluctantly, was compelled to enforce the fulfilment of a wager. Actions on wagers were not favoured by the judges; and though a judge could not refuse to try such an action, he could, and often did, postpone it until after the decision of more important cases.

Parliament gradually intervened to confine the common law within narrower limits, both in commercial and non-commercial wagers, and both by general and temporary enactments. An example of the latter was 7 Anne