This Week in History, 1948: The Vice Squad goes after bookies and bootleggers
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2020 19:16:42 +0000
The Vancouver police went on an anti-vice crusade in January of 1948. And they had no shortage of bookies and bootleggers to try and stamp out.
“They were all over the place, all over,” said former Province and News-Herald photographer John McGinnis, now 88. “Every bloody United Cigar Store, the back end there, most of those were (bookies). Bootleggers were all over the place, too. You couldn’t avoid them.”
The papers were filled with reports of the crackdown.
“Dry squads seized 59 bottles of liquor and 84 bottles of beer in forays on homes and autos,” The Sun reported on Jan. 12, 1948.
“Anti-gambling raids swept up 24 alleged Chinese gamblers in two Chinatown premises. Police combing of downtown underworld haunts (also) resulted in the arrest of 16 persons on charges of vagrancy.
“Many holdup suspects are found among such ‘undesirable characters,’ police claim.”
The following day the cops detailed how they had “bewildered” bookmakers.
“The widespread bookie custom of ‘spreading’ bets was vital to the success of the police raids,” The Sun reported.
“Bookmakers, police explain, ‘spread’ bets when they receive a particularly large wager, so as not to sustain too severe a loss themselves should the better ‘catch a hot one on the nose.’ That is, they place a share of the bet with other bookies.”
George Doubt cartoon in the Jan. 12, 1948 Vancouver Sun mocking a police anti-vice crusade that was going on at the time. Many people thought it was a political show that would soon peter out, and business would go back to usual.
Vice detectives Peter Lamont, Ernest Bradbury and Lawrence McCulloch started off raiding a single bookie, then “went through his premises for the telephone numbers of other bookies.”
After finding them, they “telephoned and placed bets with other bookies, thus gaining evidence of their operations. Later the premises were raided, and again the trio searched thoroughly for phone numbers.
“More police phone calls, phoney bets and raids resulted.”
In two weeks, the system resulted in 21 raids and 228 arrests. The Sun reported the bookies suspected somebody was “stooling” on them, or that a “big time operator” had come to town “and was helping police clean out local bookies, preparing to move in his own crew.”
The cops may have put some extra effort into their raids because the press was skeptical they could put a dent in local vice.
“You can bet a dollar on the galloping horses, the galloping dominoes or the galloping pasteboards, if you know where to go in Vancouver,” said a Sun story on Jan. 7.
“Dice games are operating under cover of night … (and) are strategically moved about the city in a roving manner reminiscent of the detective thrill magazines.
“Ordinary gambling — poker, Chinese fan-tan — is not the wide-open proposition it was some time back, but a man wishing to win or lose a week’s pay at the drop of a card knows where to go and how to get in.
“Many of the well-known shop-fronts on Granville, Howe, Seymour, Richards and bisecting downtown streets are still taking bets on the bangtails (slang for a horse tail).”
Courtroom during the royal commission inquiry into the Vancouver police department before commissioner Reginald H. Tupper, QC. Police chief Walter Mulligan is seated on the lower left; at centre are Police Federal Union secretary Dan Brown (dark tie) and union president Fred Dougherty (bow tie). At lower right is George Murray, lawyer for Vancouver Magazine Service. Photo filed July 14, 1955. Bill Dennett/Vancouver Sun.
The next day, The Sun reported that in spite of the crackdown, “bootleggers are flourishing in Vancouver.”
“As the city’s hard-pressed police force stamps out illegal liquor joints, more pop up in new locations, catering to the after-hours thirst of dry-mouthed visitors and thirsty locals,” the paper noted.
“In a one-man evening survey a Vancouver Sun reporter walked into eight ‘wide open’ establishments and was offered a choice of beer, gin, rye, rum or Scotch.”
Nonetheless, the vice squad kept at it. But the penalty for being caught wasn’t much of a deterrent. Gamblers were usually fined $5 — one of the bookies was fined $200.
McGinnis said it was an open secret that some cops were on the take from bookies and bootleggers. It all came out in a sensational inquiry into police corruption in 1955, when former policeman Jack Whalen testified that in 1945 he had acted as a “go-between” between future police Chief Walter Mulligan, detective-sergeant Len Cuthbert, and gambling kingpin Pete “Blondie” Wallace.
Whalen said the plan was for Wallace to run gambling dens east of Carrall Street, while Bruce Snider and Leo Bancroft ran gambling on the west side. The two syndicates were to pay Mulligan and Cuthbert $5,000 a month for protection.
Cuthbert denied it, but admitted that he had taken several brown bags filled with $500 from Wallace to Mulligan. The inquiry concluded that Mulligan and Cuthbert had taken bribes, but declined to press charges.