Pitch and toss seems to have been consigned to history, in this part of the world at least. It may have been the introduction of the new coinage in the 1970s that hastened its end, or the suspicion surrounding groups of men congregating together during the decades of turmoil, or simply, changing social attitudes. It had a long history as a form of gambling in Ireland: the terms "head or harp" were widely used to denote the obverse and reverse sides of a penny and there cannot have been a coin minted for Ireland with a monarch's head on one side, and the sympbol of a harp on the other since the Act of Union in 1800. Charles Dickens makes mention of pitch and toss in his 'Christmas Carol', set in the middle of the 19th century.
Pitching coins and tossing coins were two separate activities: pitching involved the flipping of a coin towards a given 'mark' or 'bob' and the order in which the coins landed in relative proximity to the 'mark' determined the order for tossing. The player who tossed the coins, two pennies, was the 'banker': the others put down their bets on the ground, and the banker covered them, or matched them. He then tossed the coins; if they came up two heads he collected, and the process was repeated until the coins came up tails, in which case the bank or tosser paid out, and the 'toss' moved on to whoever was next in line. There could also be 'side' bets whereby individuals would engage in wagers on the sidelines of the main business, although it could happen that these bets were heavier than those in the central activities. If the coins came down one head, one tail, that did not count, and the coins were thrown up until two of a kind came down, the same side up. Coins which landed on their edge or slantwise in soft ground invalidated the throw, and any participant who was not happy with a throw could shout 'bar them!' while the coins were still in the air, and that also would cancel and nulllify the throw. It was not unlike a 'foul throw' from the sideline in a soccer game, when there is something suspect about the 'throw-in'.
Given the above, it was important to the tosser that the two pennies came down heads. We are talking here about the old pre-decimal pennies, substantial coins about the size of the present 50p pieces. To that end, it was desirable to acquire a two-headed penny, although to be caught using such a device could lead to a lynching. Nevertheless, great ingenuity was employed in the workshops of engineering firms to forge just such artifices. A cruder method was to place two coins, one on top of the other, on a railway line in the hope that the weight of the locomoticve would weld the two into one double-headed penny. I have seen it tried, but never known of any such attempts being successful.
Assuming that the coins had not been wrighted, tiled, or otherwise tampered with, the toss was as good and fair a gamble as you could wish for. There was no bookie to play odds with a bias towards the house, and there was no percentage raked-off in taxes. It was, of course, illegal and subject to swoops by the policey, with subsequent prosecutions. The fines, in theory could be quite stiff – 50 years ago, they could have been up to £25 – but magistrates tended to take an increasingly lenient view of offences. The offence was dealt with under the Vagrancy Act, and up until 1935, the only punishment was a term of imprisonment. I have this on the authority of an Omagh newspaper of 1956, thanks to the research of Duchie McGale, formerly of this newspaper.
A favourite venue for the activity in Omagh was the Potato Market, off Bridge Street, at one time a colourful residential area, complete with a bookies and second-hand clothes stores. One old stager once told me that, as far as he was concerned, there could not have been enough raids.
"The cops would be seen heading our way. The rest of the boys would run away, leaving the money in the pool. The cops would run after them. I would stand my ground, and help myself to much of the pool, leaving a few quid for the look of the thing. Sure, I was fined but the most I ever had to pay was ten bob. It was well worth it. Later on, the cops got wise - they left a few quid in the pool for evidence, and they themselves pocketed the rest!"
There were sessions at the cattle pens at the Cow Commons, on Gallows Hill, and down near where Dunnes Stores now is to be found at the old livestock auction area, called the Market Yard. These latter venues had the advantage of having a sheltered area, where pitch-and-toss could continue on a wet day, and dark enough to allow crooked tossers to cover one penny with a foot, and throw up another one along with a flat, circular pebble. You can figure out for yourself how that particular scam worked, until the perpetrator was discovered and was lucky not to end up in the nearby Drumragh River.
People now bet in luxuriously appointed betting shops, or on the internet. As with so many other matters, you mention pitch and toss to most people today, they think you are rambling. One professional was known to hold up his two tossing coins, head foremost, for the formal blessing of sacred objects at the close of a mission. He must have believed that God moves in mysterious ways.
In evidence, the court heart that the proceedings had arisen after the defendant had been seen to remove a valuable umbrella from a hat stand in the foyer of a local hotel. On being subsequently confronted by the police he had explained that it was all a simple mistake and that he had confused the item in question with his own umbrella, and had no intention of selling stolen goods for his own profit. Unfortunately for his credibility, this was not his first offence of such a nature. "Perhaps," said the RM, "he was just attempting to put something away for a rainy day".
The comedian Patrick Kielty was recently fined for doing 101mph on a Scottish highway.
Some years ago the Belfast comedian Frank Carson was done for clocking 55mph in a 50mph stretch of road in England. He asked the tafffic police, "I suppose this will all be in the papers?" "We cannot do anything about that, sir," was their reply. "In that case," sez Frank,"could you make it 75mph in your report. I am trying to sell this ould banger next week".
Hawaiian newspapers have reported a recent occurrence when a man took a horse up in a lift to cheer up a sick relative in Wilcox Memorial Hospital. The man and the horse were stopped by security guards only after reaching the third floor. The patient was allowed to see his two visitors – but after all that, it turned out to be the wrong horse.
A German lorry driver, charged with being on a mobile phone whilst driving along an autobahn, was acquitted when he explained that he was only using it to keep his ears warm.
The White House had condemned alleged vote-rigging in the recent Zimbabwe elections. The words 'kettle,' 'pot' and 'black' spring to mind.
If Mugabe had used the British first-past-the-post electoral system he would have been home on the day with 23% of the electorate voting for him. As things stand, he claims 48% of the poll. Or so he says.
At a recent Irish League game the ref was pelted with, inter alia, a household chair, an empty whiskey bottle and a leg of lamb. Was it the first leg of the fixture?
