The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims Volume 1 Part 10

(65) Of course this is an allusion to the American War of Independence and the political events at home, from 1774 to 1784.

'At present, tradesmen must themselves be gamblers before they give credit to a member of these clubs; but if a reform succeeds they will be placed in a state of security. At present they must make _REGULAR_ families pay an enormous price for their goods, to enable them to run the risk of never receiving a single shilling from their gambling customers.'

Such is the picture of the times in question, drawn by a contemporary; and it may be said that private reckless and unscrupulous political machinations were the springs and fountains of all the calamities that subsequently overflowed, as it were, the 'opening of the seals' of doom upon the nation.

Notwithstanding the purity of morals enjoined by the court of George III., the early part of his reign presents a picture of dissolute manners as well as of furious party spirit. The most fashionable of our ladies of rank were immersed in play, or devoted to politics: the same spirit carried them into both. The Sabbath was disregarded, spent often in cards, or desecrated by the meetings of partisans of both factions; moral duties were neglected and decorum outraged. The fact was, that a minor court had become the centre of all the bad pa.s.sions and reprehensible pursuits in vogue. Carlton House, in Pall Mall, which even the oldest of us can barely remember, with its elegant open screen, the pillars in front, its low exterior, its many small rooms, its decorations in vulgar taste, and, to crown the whole, its a.s.sociations of a corrupting revelry,--Carlton House was, in the days of good King George, almost as great a scandal to the country as Whitehall in the time of improper King Charles II.(66) The influence which the example of a young prince, of manners eminently popular, produced upon the young n.o.bility of the realm was most disastrous in every way and ruinous to public morality.

(66) Wharton, 'The Queens of Society.' Mem. of _Georgiana, d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire._

After that period, the vast license given to those abominable engines of fraud, the E.O. tables,(67) and the great length of time which elapsed before they met with any check from the police, afforded a number of dissolute and abandoned characters an opportunity of acquiring property.

This they afterwards increased in the low gaming houses, and by following up the same system at Newmarket and the other fashionable places of resort, and finally by means of the lottery, that mode of insensate gambling; till at length they acquired a sum of money nothing short of _ONE MILLION STERLING_.

(67) So called from the letters E and O, the turning up of which decided the bet. They were otherwise called _Roulette_ and _Roly Poly_, from the b.a.l.l.s used in them. They seem to have been introduced in England about the year 1739. The first was set up at Tunbridge and proved extremely profitable to the proprietors.

This enormous wealth was then used as an efficient capital in carrying on various illegal establishments, particularly gaming houses, the expenses of a first-rate house being L7000 per annum, which were again employed as the means of increasing these ill-gotten riches.

The system was progressive but steady in its development. Several of these conspicuous members of the world of fashion, rolling in their gaudy carriages and a.s.sociating with men of high rank and influence, might be found on the registers of the Old Bailey, or had been formerly occupied in turning, with their own hands, E.O. tables in the public streets.

The following _Queries_, which are extracted from the _Morning Post_ of July the 5th, 1797, throw considerable light upon this curious subject, and show how seriously the matter was regarded when so public a denunciation was deemed necessary and ventured upon:--

'Is Mr Ogden (now the Newmarket oracle) the same person who, five-and-twenty years since, was an annual pedestrian to Ascot, covered with dust, amusing himself with "_p.r.i.c.kING in the_ belt," "_HUSTLING_ in the hat," &c., among the lowest cla.s.s of rustics, at the inferior booths of the fair?

'Is D-k-y B--n who now has his snug farm, the same person who, some years since, _DROVE A POST CHAISE_ for T--y, of Bagshot, could neither read nor write, and was introduced to _THE FAMILY_ only by his pre-eminence at cribbage?

'Is Mr Twycross (with his phaeton) the same person who some years since became a bankrupt in Tavistock Street, immediately commenced the Man of Fashion at Bath, kept running horses, &c., _secundum artem?_

'Is Mr Phillips (who has now his town and country house, in the most fashionable style) the same who was originally a linen-draper and bankrupt at Salisbury, and who made his first _family entre_ in the metropolis, by his superiority at _Billiards_ (with Captain Wallace, Orrell, &c.) at Cropley's, in Bow Street?

'Was poor carbuncled P--e (so many years the favourite decoy duck of _THE FAMILY_) the very barber of Oxford, who, in the midst of the operation upon a gentleman's face, laid down his razor, swearing that he would never shave another man so long as he lived, and immediately became the hero of the card table, the _bones_, the _box_, and the _c.o.c.kpit?_'

Capital was not the only qualification for admission into the Confederacy of Gambling. Some of the members were taken into partnership on account of their dexterity in 'securing' dice or 'dealing' cards. One is said to have been actually a sharer in every 'h.e.l.l' at the West-End of the Town, because he was feared as much as he was detested by the firms, who had reason to know that he would 'peach' if not kept quiet.

Informers against the illegal and iniquitous a.s.sociations were arrested and imprisoned upon writs, obtained by perjury--to deter others from similar attacks; witnesses were suborned; officers of justice bribed; ruffians and bludgeon-men employed, where gratuities failed; personal violence and even a.s.sa.s.sination threatened to all who dared to expose the crying evil--among others, to Stockdale, the well-known publisher of the day, in Piccadilly.

Then came upon the nation the muddy flood of French emigrants, poured forth by the Great Revolution--a set of men, speaking generally, whose vices contaminated the very atmosphere.

Before the advent of these worthies the number of gambling houses in the metropolis, exclusive of those so long established by subscription, was not more than half-a-dozen; but by the year 1820 they had increased to nearly fifty. Besides _Faro_ and _Hazard_, the foreign games of _Macao, Roulette, Rouge et Noir_, &c., were introduced, and there was a graduated accommodation for all ranks, from the Peer of the Realm to the Highwayman, the Burglar, and the Pick et.

At one of the watering-places, in 1803, a baronet lost L20,000 at play, and a bond for L7000. This will scarcely surprise us when we consider that at the time above five hundred notorious characters supported themselves in the metropolis by this species of robbery, and in the summer spread themselves through the watering-places for their professional operations. Some of them kept bankers, and were possessed of considerable property in the funds and in land, and went their _circuits_ as regularly as the judges. Most excellent judges they were, too, of the condition of a 'pigeon.'

In a great commercial city where, from the extent of its trade, manufacture, and revenue, there must be an immense circulation of property, the danger is not to be conceived of the allurements which were thus held out to young men in business having the command of money, as well as the clerks of merchants, bankers, and others. In fact, too many of this cla.s.s proved, at the bar of justice, the consequence of their resort to these complicated scenes of vice, idleness, extravagance, misfortune, and crime. Among innumerable instances are the following:--In 1796, a shopman to a grocer in the city was seduced into a gaming party, where he first lost all his own money, and ultimately what his master had intrusted him with. He hanged himself in his bed-room a few hours afterwards.

In the same year, Lord Kenyon in summing up a case of the kind said:--'It was extremely to be lamented that the vice of gambling had descended to the very lowest orders of the people. It was prevalent among the highest ranks of society, who had set the example to their inferiors, and who, it seemed, were too great for the law. I wish they could be punished. If any prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and the parties are justly convicted, whatever may be their rank or station in the country--though they should be the first ladies in the land--they shall certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory.'

In 1820, James Lloyd, one of the harpies who practised on the credulity of the lower orders by keeping a _Little Go_, or illegal lottery, was brought up for the twentieth time, to answer for that offence. This man was a methodist preacher, and a.s.sembled his neighbours together at his dwelling on a Sat.u.r.day to preach the gospel to them, and the remainder of the week he was to be found, with an equally numerous party, instructing them in the ruinous vice of gambling. The charge was clearly proved, and the prisoner was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour.

In the same year numbers of young persons robbed their masters to play at a certain establishment called Morley's Gambling House, in the City, and were ruined there. Some were brought to justice at the Old Bailey; others, in the madness caused by their losses, destroyed themselves; and some escaped to other countries, by their own activity, or through the influence of their friends.

A traveller of the coachmakers, Messrs Houlditch of Long Acre, embezzled or applied to his own use considerable sums of money belonging to them.

It appeared in evidence that the prisoner was sent by his employers to the Continent to take orders for carriages; he was allowed a handsome salary, and was furnished with carriages for sale. The money he received for them he was to send to his employers, after deducting his expenses; but instead of so doing, he gambled nearly the whole of it away. The following letter to his master was put in by way of explanation of his career:--'Sir,--The errors into which I have fallen have made me so hate myself that I have adopted the horrible resolution of destroying myself.

I am sensible of the crime I commit against G.o.d, my family, and society, but have not courage to live dishonoured. The generous confidence you placed in me I have basely violated; I have robbed you, and though not to enrich myself, the consciousness of it destroys me. Bankruptcy, poverty, beggary, and want I could bear--conscious integrity would support me: but the ill-fated acquaintance I formed led me to those earthly h.e.l.ls--gambling houses; and then commenced my villainies and deceptions to you. My losses were not large at first; and the stories that were told me of gain made me hope they would soon be recovered. At this period I received the order to go to Vienna, and on settling at the hotel I found my debts treble what I had expected. I was in consequence compelled to leave the two carriages as a guarantee for part of the debt, which I had not in my power to discharge. I had hoped such success at Vienna as would enable me to state all to you; but disappointment blasted every hope, and despair, on my return to Paris, began to generate the fatal resolution which, at the moment you read this, will have matured itself to consummation. I feel that my reputation is blasted; no way left of re-imbursing the money wasted, your confidence in me totally destroyed, and nothing left to me but to see my wife and children, and die. Affection for them holds me in existence a little longer. The gaming table again presented itself to my imagination as the only possible means of extricating myself. Count Montoni's 3000 francs, which I received before you came to Paris, furnished me with the means--my death speaks the result! After robbery so base as mine, I fear it will be of no use for me to solicit your kindness for my wretched wife and forlorn family. Oh, Sir, if you have pity on them and treat them kindly, and do not leave them to perish in a foreign land, the consciousness of the act will cheer you in your last moments, and G.o.d will reward you and yours for it tenfold. Their sensibilities will not cause them to need human aid. Thus I shall be threefold the murderer.

I thank you for the kindness you have rendered me; and I a.s.sure your brother that he has, in this dreadful moment, my ardent wishes for his welfare here and hereafter. I have so contrived it that you will see a person at the Prince's tomorrow, who will interpret for you. In mentioning my fate to him, you will not much serve your own interest by blackening my character and memory. I subjoin the reward of my villainies and the correct balance of the account. Count Edmond's regular bills I have not received; his valet will give you them; the others are in a pocket-book, which will be found on my corpse somewhere in the wood of Boulogne.

'Signed, W. KINSBY.'

It appears, however, that the gentleman changed his mind and did not commit suicide, but surrendered at the Insolvent Debtor's Court to be dealt with according to law, which was a much wiser resolution.

To the games of Faro, Hazard, Macao, Doodle-do, and Rouge et Noir, more even than to horse-racing, many tradesmen, once possessing good fortunes and great business, owed their destruction. Thousands upon thousands have been ruined in the vicinity of St James's. It was not confined to youths of fortune only, but the decent and respectable tradesman, as well as the dashing clerk of the merchant and banker, was ingulfed in its vortes.

The proprietors of gaming houses were also concerned in fraudulent insurances, and employed a number of clerks while the lotteries were drawing, who conducted the business without risk, in counting-houses, where no insurances were taken, but to which books were carried, as well as from the different offices in every part of the town, as from the _Morocco-men_, who went from door to door taking insurances and enticing the poor and middling ranks to adventure.

It was gambling, and not the burdens of the long war, nor the revulsion from war to peace, that made so many bankruptcies in the few years succeeding the Battle of Waterloo. It was the plunderers at gaming tables that filled the gazettes and made the gaols overflow with so many victims.

A foreigner has advanced an opinion as to the source of the gambling propensity of Englishmen. 'The English,' says M. Dunne,(68) 'the most speculative nation on earth, calculate even upon future contingences.

Nowhere else is the adventurous rage for stock-jobbing carried on to so great an extent. The fury of gambling, so common in England, is undoubtedly a daughter of this speculative genius. The _Greeks_ of Great Britain are, however, much inferior to those of France in cunning and industry. A certain Frenchman who a.s.sumed in London the t.i.tle and manners of a baron, has been known to surpa.s.s all the most dexterous rogues of the three kingdoms in the art of robbing. His aide-de-camp was a kind of German captain, or rather _chevalier d'industrie_, a person who had acted the double character of a French spy and an English officer at the same time. Their tactics being at length discovered, the baron was obliged to quit the country; and he is said to have afterwards entered the monastery of La Trappe,' where doubtless, in the severe and gloomy religious practices of that terrible penitentiary, he atoned for his past enormities.

(68) 'Refexions sur l'Homme.'

'Till near the commencement of the present century the favourite game was Faro, and as it was a decided advantage to hold the Bank, masters and mistresses, less scrupulous than Wilberforce, frequently volunteered to fleece and amuse the company. But scandal having made busy with the names of some of them, it became usual to hire a professed gamester at five or ten guineas a night, to set up a table for the evening, just as any operatic professional might now-a-days be hired for a concert, or a band-master for a ball.

'Faro gradually dropped out of fashion; Macao took its place; Hazard was never wanting; and Whist began to be played for stakes which would have satisfied Fox himself, who, though it was calculated that he might have netted four or five thousand a year by games of skill, complained that they afforded no excitement.

'Wattier's Club, in Piccadilly, was the resort of the Macao players. It was kept by an old _maitre d'hotel_ of George IV., a character in his way, who took a just pride in the cookery and wines of his establishment.

'All the brilliant stars of fashion (and fashion was power then) frequented Wattier's, with Beau Brummell for their sun. 'Poor Brummell, dead, in misery and idiotcy, at Caen! and I remember him in all his glory, cutting his jokes after the opera, at White's, in a black velvet great-coat, and a c.o.c.ked hat on his well-powdered head.

'Nearly the same turn of reflection is suggested as we run over the names of his a.s.sociates. Almost all of them were ruined--three out of four irretrievably. Indeed, it was the forced expatriation of its supporters that caused the club to be broken up.

'During the same period (from 1810 to 1815 or thereabouts) there was a great deal of high play at White's and Brookes', particularly at Whist.

At Brookes' figured some remarkable characters--as Tippoo Smith, by common consent the best Whist-player of his day; and an old gentleman nicknamed Neptune, from his having once flung himself into the sea in a fit of despair at being, as he thought, ruined. He was fished out in time, found he was not ruined, and played on during the remainder of his life.

'The most distinguished player at White's was the n.o.bleman who was presented at the Salons in Paris as Le Wellington des Joueurs (Lord Rivers); and he richly merited the name, if skill, temper, and the most daring courage are t.i.tles to it. The greatest genius, however, is not infallible. He once lost three thousand four hundred pounds at Whist by not remembering that the seven of hearts was in! He played at Hazard for the highest stakes that any one could be got to play for with him, and at one time was supposed to have won nearly a hundred thousand pounds; but _IT ALL WENT_, along with a great deal more, at Crockford's.

'There was also a great deal of play at Graham's, the Union, the Cocoa Tree, and other clubs of the second order in point of fashion. Here large sums were hazarded with equal rashness, and remarkable characters started up. Among the most conspicuous was the late Colonel Aubrey, who literally pa.s.sed his life at play. He did nothing else, morning, noon, and night; and it was computed that he had paid more than sixty thousand pounds for card-money. He was a very fine player at all games, and a shrewd, clever man. He had been twice to India and made two fortunes.

It was said that he lost the first on his way home, transferred himself from one ship to another without landing, went back, and made the second. His life was a continual alternation between poverty and wealth; and he used to say, the greatest pleasure in life is winning at cards--the next greatest, losing!

'For several years deep play went on at all these clubs, fluctuating both as to amount and locality, till by degrees it began to flag. It had got to a low ebb when Mr Crockford came to London and established the celebrated club which bore his name.

'Some good was certainly produced by the system. In the first place, private gambling (between gentleman and gentleman), with its degrading incidents, is at an end. In the second place, this very circ.u.mstance brings the worst part of the practice within the reach of the law.

Public gambling, which only existed by and through what were popularly termed _h.e.l.ls_, might be easily suppressed. There were, in 1844, more than twenty of these establishments in Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and St James's, called into existence by Crockford's success.'(69)