Sweeps

King George, wearing a black silk hat, a cutaway and a gardenia in his buttonhole, put down his field glasses and a man at the side of the track put up the names of the horses who had finished first, second and third in the British Derby at Epsom Downs--Cameronian, Orpen, Sandwich. Immediately there began the amazing procedure of publicizing the real winners of the Derby, which has for years been recognized as merely a spectacular way of deciding the greatest racehorse lotteries in the world. An extraordinary crew, most of them convinced that their success was in some measure due to shrewdness, determination or piety, the winners* included:

King Alphonso XIII of Spain, whose name had been put on a ticket presumably for a joke. He got a $500 consolation prize.

The Hon. H. O. Edwardes, youngest son of Lord Kensington, who won $72,900, first prize in the London Stock Exchange Sweepstakes.

One Joe Kennedy, a yapping Negro janitor of West Indian extraction who heard the race by radio in Boston's Morgan Memorial. Tottering to his knees and twittering with prayer, he said: "Thanks Lord, for all the luck you have brought me." Later he announced that he would send his son to Harvard, his girls to Radcliffe and summon his wife from Jamaica.

Shrewd, he secured a manager to aid him to hold onto the $150,000 he had won on Cameronian.

A blind, 60-year-old London basketmaker, who said: "Trade is bad and the money [$150,000] will be very handy."

A London grocer's clerk whose employer had discharged him for gambling.

An elevator starter in the Keith Building, Cincinnati, who won $50,000. After hearing a radio description of the race, he said to his wife: "Well, honey, I must be hurrying along now and go to work."

A butler named Cross, of Colney, Norwich, England, 73 years old and retired on a pension, who remarked: "Whatever I get will be a godsend."

A schoolgirl in Catford, England, who, when imormed that she had won $50,000, said: "I shall buy myself a pretty dog."

Rose Milligan, a barmaid in Louth, Ireland, whose nom de plume on the ticket was "My Pub Now" because she had always wanted to own a saloon. She said that with her $50,000 she would get one.

Eleven members of a Herefordshire Golf Club who, when they learned they had together won $75,000, began arguing about who should get the biggest share.

A Manchester, N. H., crippled 39-year-old female millworker, who got $34,099 and planned to spend it on her 11-year-old son.

A Swiss headwaiter in a Birmingham hotel. He shared a first prize in the Calcutta Sweeps ($500,000) with one of the customers, who was found in a hospital where he had been taken after an automobile accident.

A grocer in Hopkinsville, Ky., who paid a dollar for his ticket and won $136,399 on Cameronian. His wife danced a jig and nodded when he announced his plans to "send receipts to all my creditors and then burn the account book publicly."

Little attention was paid to the appalling number of persons who held losing tickets on the Derby. One of these, an oiler named Joe Kennedy on the S. S. American Banker, persisted in supposing that he and not Blackamoor Kennedy in Boston had won the $150,000 on Cameronian. A bigger and better loser was the Maharajah of Patiala who, as is his custom, patronized the Calcutta Sweepstakes heavily and bought an additional $25,000 worth of tickets in the Irish Hospital Stakes. He got no prize.

There are four big sweepstakes, a large number of smaller ones, decided by the Derby each year:

The Calcutta Sweepstakes, oldest and until this year, largest, was organized in 1871 by members of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club, who were disappointed at being away from England on Derby Day. Expenses of running the Calcutta Sweeps--small because the bookkeeping is done by a group of Turf Club members--are paid by the interest accrued on ticket money, this year about $5,000,000 banked in Calcutta before the running of the Derby.

The largest of the Sweeps decided last week was the Dublin Hospitals Sweepstakes Trust, run by the Hospitals Trust, Ltd., officially approved by the Irish Government and superintended by Dublin politicians. A staff of 1,200 clerks are required to handle its accounts. The tickets are sold for ten shillings apiece; agents keep two out of each book of twelve as their commission. The draw, supervised by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, is conducted by ten hospital nurses who pick the tickets from the portholes in a steel cylinder in which they have been thoroughly churned. Twenty-three hospitals of the Irish Free State received last week 25% of the total taking of the Hospitals Trust--$8,563,797. One of the 19 first prizes was the $150,000 won by Blackamoor Joe Kennedy.

The 100,000 tickets in the Stock Exchange Mutual Subscription Fund are scarcer than the others and sell for five dollars each.

In Canada, Unit No. 33 of the Army and Navy Veterans of Canada runs two sweepstakes every year, the largest on the Derby. Since sweeps are illegal in Quebee, the drawings are held in Newfoundland, where the Government takes an 8% tax--on, last week, $1,140,000. Most U. S. Derby speculators buy tickets in the Army and Navy Sweeps and the Dublin Hospitals Sweeps.

Easily overlooked in the gratification or disappointment of the estimated 10,000,000 ticket holders in these and other Derby sweepstakes was the satisfaction of John Arthur Dewar, who inherited Camcronian with the rest of the race horses that had belonged to his uncle, the late whiskey-distilling Thomas Robert Dewar (TIME, April 21, 1930). Said Derby-winner Dewar: "I am the most delighted man in the world. .

*Most spectacular of last year's sweepstakes winners were Daniel Dougherty, apartment house doorman and his sons Edward P., 20, and Daniel Jr., 23, Brooklyn broker's clerks who won $149,262 on Blenheim. In reporting their ridiculous doings--which included a trip to Canada, family bickerings, $10 for a luncheon check--TIME (June 16, 1930) promised to report the Dougherty financial status a year later. Last week, the two Dougherty sons were still broker's clerks, still lived in Brooklyn with Father Dougherty, now retired. Each had invested his money in stocks which had not gone down too much. Each son owned a Chrysler roadster. Said Daniel Dougherty: "Thank God we haven't gone high hat . . . we weren't suckers with the money." Edward Dougherty said he might give up his job, study to be a doctor.

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