In keeping with the many other passages in the novel in which
Lenehan predicts (falsely) the
winner of the day's Gold Cup horse race, he tells M'Coy
in Wandering Rocks that he wants to "pop into Lynam's"
to learn the odds on Sceptre. Lynam's bookmaking business
appears nowhere in the 1904 Thom's Directory so it was
probably a black market operation, possibly run out of a home.
Judging by the walking path that
Joyce describes for Lenehan and M'Coy in that chapter, it
seems to be housed on or just off Temple Bar.
§ Heading
toward Temple Bar, Lenehan tells M'Coy, "I want to pop into
Lynam's to see Sceptre's starting price. What's the time by
your gold watch and chain?" M'Coy responds to his jocose
request by peering in the windows of a couple of tea merchants
and reporting that it is now "After three." This means that on
London time it is after 3:25,
so, as Gifford points out, "the race has already been run; but
the news, which was to come by telegraph, was not due to reach
Dublin until 4:00, so Dublin bookmakers would still take bets
at 3:00."
In an essay on "Lynam's" on James Joyce Online Notes,
John Simpson observes that in 1904 British law "imposed severe
restrictions" on betting. It was "essentially only legal on
racecourses or (through bookmakers or their ‘commission
agents’) on credit. It was illegal to hand over cash—in the
street, or in a private or a public house, in order to place a
bet," but the practice was nevertheless "rife" in Dublin. In a
1902 government report one of the people interviewed by the
commission testified, "I understand there are a number of boys
employed here in Dublin by newspapers, who go out early in the
mornings with betting sheets—I think they call them
tissues—and they take these to the public-houses, and I think
that is a very bad thing."
§ Simpson
observes that the 1901 census recorded a bookmaker named
Richard Lynam living at 90 Lower Gardiner Street, a sketchy
part of town. In the 1911 census he had moved to Mountjoy and
no longer reported an occupation, but his younger brothers
Denis and Patrick lived nearby and described themselves
respectively as "bookmaker" and "commission agent." The three
Lynam brothers were hard men ("Dick" was a former boxing
champion) known for their connections to horse racing. In the
1870s their father Patrick, who had a police record, lived at
number 2 Lower Fownes Street, a
one-block street running between Temple Bar and Wellington
Quay that Lenehan and M'Coy pass on their way to Merchant's
Arch. He too worked as a bookmaker.
Given the locations specified in Wandering Rocks it
would seem that the bookmaker whom Lenehan visits is the
father, Patrick Sr., but in fact he died in 1895. Joyce may
have been unaware of the details of his life or willing to
prolong it in fiction (as he did for Ben
Dollard), but it could also be that Lynam family members
continued to make book in the Temple Bar area after the death
of the patriarch. Simpson has discovered stories in 1904 and
1907 issues of the Irish Times which mention three
police reports of illegal betting operations run on or near
Temple Bar.
