Glasgow Crime Files: When the bookie took on bank in sensational trial

Sammy Docherty was the bold, Bentley-driving bookie who took on the big bank bosses in the 1960s.

Sammy was a flamboyant figure in the city, famous for having the looks and swagger of a Hollywood star – and driving a flash car with a personalised number plate.

This newspaper, then the Evening Times, took great pleasure in following the story, which started when, in 1962, Sammy sent a clerk to deposit cash in his account with the Royal Bank of Scotland on Jamaica Street.

The bank teller helped the young clerk count the money, which came to £8800, but a deposit slip was issued with the sum of £88,000 on it by mistake.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Sammy – who was also a boxing promoter - decided to sue the bank for £81,000, claiming it had reneged on its receipt. He wanted the difference.

The Evening Times covered the trial on our front pages for several days in March 1963, and the verdict – in the bank’s favour – two months later.

“Glasgow bookmaker Samuel Docherty was accused today of ‘telling a pack of lies’,” said one of our articles.

“Mr Docherty, whose huge new Bentley SD 147 once more dominates the car park in Parliament Square, retorted quietly: ‘I don’t tell lies.’”

The article continued: “Counsel’s dramatic charge … came when the bookmaker was telling how he sent a messenger to the Jamaica Street branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland with a zipped but unlocked satchel containing a sum of money he hadn’t completely counted but which ran into thousands of pounds.”

The enchanted audience laughed as Sammy produced a roll of cash from his pocket to show the court how the bundles of money would have looked.

“You wouldn’t be carrying £2000 in bundles of £100 in your pockets?” asked Lord Cameron, presiding.

“Oh yes,” affirmed the bookmaker, to which Lord Cameron replied, drily: “It must have spoiled your suit.”

The article describes “an audible whistling in the court when [Sammy’s accountant] Woollard gave particulars for some of the transactions in which Sammy had been engaged, apart from his betting business.”

Huge paper parcels were produced in court to show the burden with which Sammy’s runner would have had to stagger through the streets of Glasgow if the amount Sammy claimed he was depositing had in fact been lodged.

It was all very entertaining but in the end, common sense prevailed.

Presiding over the court, Lord Cameron did not mince his words. He cleared the young teller who made the mistake adding: “He is a young man with a very modest mode of life. Of Docherty, I have formed a very different opinion.”

He added: “This is a case where one side is not telling the truth.”

The Glasgow bookie of the 30s and 40s was a somewhat shadowy figure, who pitched up in tenement closes or makeshift offices next to the shipyards to ply his trade.

Under The Betting Act (1853) and the Suppression of Betting Houses Act (1874) it was illegal to use premises for betting purposes, to receive bets on horse races or to be a bookmaker, until things changed many decades later.

So, these men had to be sharp – and well-organised, with an army of watchers and runners keeping a look-out for the police.

One of Glasgow’s most respected bookies in Maryhill was Mr Ventry, grandfather, in fact, of Scottish actor Laurie Ventry.

In an Evening Times article in 2016, Laurie recalled getting a job as a race course commentator working from a telegraph company office in Glasgow.

“I got the job because my family were all bookies,” he revealed. “My grandfather was the biggest bookie in Glasgow in the thirties and forties, so I had this advantage.”

Laurie’s father was also a bookmaker, operating from a little shop through a pen which had been an air raid shelter.