IT was a sensational trial, which gripped Glasgow and beyond – the bookie who took on the bank.

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

Author John Keeman, whose book In the Shadow of the Crane recalls his city childhood, remembers: “It’s one of my favourite legal stories.

“The Evening Times did many stories about Sammy in the 1960s.

“In 1962 he sent one of his clerks to deposit some cash to his account with the Royal Bank of Scotland in Jamaica Street.”

John adds, with a laugh: “His clerk was not the brightest and the bank teller helped him to count the money. There was a total of £9995 but the teller filled in the receipt for £99,995 in error. Docherty then sued the bank for £81,000.”

The Evening Times covered the trial on its 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 ­article.

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

Glasgow Times:

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 Docherty 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 [Docherty’s accountant] Woollard gave particulars for some of the transactions in which Docherty 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 Docherty claimed he was depositing had in fact been lodged.

At the end of the trial, 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.”

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.

Reader Dan Harris recalls bookmakers being an ‘integral part’ of Glasgow society when he was growing up in Maryhill in the 30s and 40s.

“The problem for most of them was that they were acting illegally,” he explains. “In the Garscube Road area where I lived, street bookies, as they were known, could be found about every 200 yards or so. Some would stand at a corner, or have an ‘office’ up a close.

“When I was about five or six, it was great fun for me to look out the window and see the bookie being chased by the police.”

Dan recalls one of the most respected bookies in the area 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.

“I loved racing,” he said. “I’d studied form since I was six years old and could work out odds. And this job was great for me.”

Dan remembers Mr Ventry’s office upstairs in a local tenement.

“Whenever he had been tipped off there was to be a police raid, he would get volunteer pensioners to be in the ‘office’,” he smiles.

“They would be herded into the dark blue police van and taken to the Pokey to face justice.

“Everybody – including the police – were happy about the outcome.”

Dan also recalls the bookie’s ­funeral in the 60s.

“The Garscube Road was packed with hundreds of mourners as the hearse made its way to the cemetery,” says Dan. “He was a bookie, but he had given financial support to many of these mourners in their time of need.”