Established by an Act of Parliament under Winston Churchill’s government in 1928, the first major racing meetings with tote betting were in the July of the following year at Newmarket and Carlisle. The system was founded to provide a safe haven for punters, controlled by the state, and beyond the reach of illegal bookmakers. However, initially race-goers proved hostile to the move, being accustomed to the on-course bookmakers, the ‘bookies’. The Tote as the Racecourse Betting Control Board (RBCB) took four years before it could start distributing even small profits for “purposes conducive to the improvement of breeds of horses or the sport of horseracing.”

The automatic tote machine was invented in Australia in 1913. Sir George Julius, born in Norwich, England in April 1873 before being taken by his parents to Victoria, Australia, invented the machine to be a mechanical vote counter. When the governing bodies did not take it up he redesigned it to issue tickets for bets at race meetings. The first totalizator was installed at the Ellerslie Racecourse, New Zealand, in 1917. These original mechanical machines had to housed in rooms of 10 by 10 metres that held the miles of flexible cables.

During the ‘20s George Julius’s company Automatic Totalisators Ltd sold the machines to 27 racecourses in India, Ceylon, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada and France. In 1926 the Longchamps course purchased 273, which remained the largest sale until Caracas, Venezuela in 1957. The first one bought in the UK was at Harringay, London in 1930. This venue also had the last remaining Julius Totalizator until it was replaced in 1987. Although the machines were sold all over the world in the ‘30s, including dog tracks in Britain and Hialeah Racetrack in Florida, the company has no record of any sold to a British racecourse even though by this time the Tote was operational.

In the early 1930s in Britain Tote clubs began to appear, causing much alarm to some citizens. The Betting and Lotteries Act of 1934 soon banned them. The Tote made very little progress or money for around ten years although pari-mutuel betting in France was most successful. However, France had no history of racecourse bookmakers.

In the Betting Levy Act of 1961 British bookmakers were allowed to open shops and the spending powers of the RBCB were transferred to the Levy Board. The Horserace Totaliser Board replaced the RBCB and over the following decades the Tote has fought to keep its place against competition from the big bookmaking companies. It is presently in fourth place behind Ladbrokes, William Hill and Coral.

The Tote is to be privatised but owned and run for the benefit of racing. Nowadays all the transactions are computerised with quantities of terminals that George Julius could never have imagined. The system is heading for its centenary and betting on the horses is as popular as ever, particularly in the land of the totalisator invention - Australia.

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