Professional gambling has changed throughout the world. It might have started in Vegas with the World Series of Poker, but chances are the UK had quite a change when they enacted gaming laws to legalise gambling establishments such as poker parlours. Percy Cunliffe is one who managed to gain some fairly good plays throughout the 1900s. It should be mentioned that the Hermits of Salisbury Plain, which includes Percy Cunliffe, managed some of the largest bets. This foursome also included Wilfred Purefoy. The team started gambling at the beginning of the 1900s.
Percy Cunliffe did not start off as a professional gambler. Rather, he was a city financier in Old Etonian. He managed to have the money needed to make bets at the table. It also helped to have Wilfred Purefoy in the team given that he had quite a bit of money with his stud farm. So, what did they do to make money on bets?
Percy and the rest of the party bet with horses. They created a system for betting on horses in which the horses used in the races were trained secretly. Since there was worry that the entire system would be exposed the group of four made certain that nothing including mail went out that was not inspected first. The horses were trained at Druid’s Lodge stables. These stables were located in Salisbury Plain.
The entire system worked only because information could not be shared. Had anyone found out what they were doing it would have made it harder to get anyone to bet on the horses. Furthermore, the four would not have been able to bet on the horse races in order to win a great deal of money. All of this occurred during the early 1900s. Hackler’s Pride was one of the first trained horses. It was trained by Jack Fallow. The won earned the group at least 250,000 pounds. When considering the amount of money one can have today it is estimated that had such a situation happened today they would have gained about 10 million pounds. The fact is that in one season with horses like Ypsilanti on a 25/1 favourite they could have had another 4 million pounds by today’s money.
Little else is known about Percy Cunliffe. We know that he was a financier. We know that he was certainly a corrupt sports bettor considering his plan with the Hermits. What we do not know is when he was born or died. We also do not know the exact amount of money he and his Hermits managed to win during their corruption of the horse races. It is due to their secrecy that makes it impossible to find out a great deal about each one involved such as what part they played, where they were from, and what became of the entire situation. After all, the corruption was eventually exposed or we would not be able to write about it here.