The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims Volume 1 Part 11

(69) Private MS. (Edinburgh Review, vol. Lx.x.x).

Whilst such was the state of things among the aristocracy and those who were able to consort with them, it seems that the lower orders were pursuing 'private gambling,' in their 'ungenteel' fas.h.i.+on, to a very sad extent. In 1834 a writer in the 'Quarterly' speaks as follows:--

'Doncaster, Epsom, Ascot, and Warwick, and most of our numerous race-grounds and race-towns, are scenes of destructive and universal gambling among the lower orders, which our absurdly lax police never attempt to suppress; and yet, without the slightest approach to an improperly harsh interference with the pleasures of the people, the Roulette and E.O. tables, which plunder the peasantry at these places for the benefit of travelling sharpers (certainly equally respectable with some bipeds of prey who drive coroneted cabs near St James's), might be put down by any watchful magistrate.'(70)

(70) Quarterly Review, vol. LII.

I fear that something similar may be suggested at the present day, as to the same notorious localities.

Mr Sala, writing some years ago on gambling in England, said:--

'The pa.s.sion for gambling is, I believe, innate; but there is, happily, a very small percentage of the population who are born with a propensity for high play. We are speculative and eagerly commercial; but it is rare to discover among us that inveterate love for gambling, as gambling, which you may find among the Italians, the South American Spaniards, the Russians, and the Poles. Moro, Baccara, Tchuka--these are games at which continental peasants will wager and lose their little fields, their standing crops, their harvest in embryo, their very wives even. The Americans surpa.s.s us in the ardour of their propitiation of the gambling G.o.ddess, and on board the Mississippi steamboats, an enchanting game, called _Poker_, is played with a delirium of excitement, whose intensity can only be imagined by realizing that famous bout at "catch him who can," which took place at the horticultural _fete_ immortalized by Mr Samuel Foote, comedian, at which was present the great _Panjandrum_ himself, with the little round b.u.t.ton at top, the festivities continuing till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of the company's boots.

'When I was a boy, not so very long--say twenty years--since, the West-end of London swarmed with illicit gambling houses, known by a name I will not offend your ears by repeating.

On every race-course there was a public gambling booth and an abundance of thimble-riggers' stalls. These, I am happy to state, exist no longer; and the fools who are always ready to be plucked, can only, in gambling, fall victims to the commonest and coa.r.s.est of swindlers; skittle sharps, beer-house rogues and sharpers, and knaves who travel to entrap the unwary in railway carriages with loaded dice, marked cards, and little squares of green baize for tables, and against whom the authorities of the railway companies very properly warn their pa.s.sengers. A notorious gambling house in St James's Street--Crockford's,--where it may be said, without exaggeration, that millions of pounds sterling have been diced away by the fools of fas.h.i.+on, is now one of the most sumptuous and best conducted dining establishments in London--the "Wellington." The semipatrician Hades that were to be found in the purlieus of St James's, such as the "Cocoa Tree," the "Berkeley," and the "stick-shop," at the corner of Albemarle Street--a whole Pandemonium of rosewood and plate-gla.s.s dens--never recovered from a razzia made on them simultaneously one night by the police, who were organized on a plan of military tactics, and under the command of Inspector Beresford; and at a concerted signal a.s.sailed the portals of the infamous places with sledge-hammers. At the time to which I refer, in Paris, the Palais Royal, and the environs of the Boulevards des Italiens, abounded with magnificent gambling rooms similar to those still in existence in Hombourg, which were regularly licensed by the police, and farmed under the munic.i.p.ality of the Ville de Paris; a handsome per-centage of the iniquitous profits being paid towards the charitable inst.i.tutions of the French metropolis. There are very many notabilities of the French Imperial Court, who were then _fermiers des jeux_, or gambling house contractors; and only a year or two since Doctor Louis Veron, ex-dealer in quack medicines, ex-manager of the Grand Opera, and ex-proprietor of the "Const.i.tutionnel" newspaper, offered an enormous royalty to Government for the privilege of establis.h.i.+ng a gambling house in Paris. But the Emperor Napoleon--all ex-member of Crockford's as he is--sensibly declined the tempting bait. A similarly "generous" offer was made last year to the Belgian Government by a joint-stock company who wanted to establish public gaming tables at the watering-places of Ostend, and who offered to establish an hospital from their profits; but King Leopold, the astute proprietor of Claremont, was as prudent as his Imperial cousin of France, and refused to soil his hands with cogged dice.

The lease of the Paris authorized gaming houses expired in 1836-7; and the munic.i.p.ality, albeit loath to lose the fat annual revenue, was induced by governmental pressure not to renew it; and it is a.s.serted that from that moment the number of annual suicides in Paris very sensibly decreased. "It is not generally known," as the penny-a-liners say, "that the Rev. Caleb Colton, a clergyman of the Church of England, and the author of "Lacon," a book replete with aphoristic wisdom, blew his brains out in the forest of St Germains, after ruinous losses at Frascati's, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu and the Boulevards, one of the most noted of the _Maisons des Jeux_, and which was afterwards turned into a _restaurant_, and is now a shawl-shop.(71) Just before the revolution of 1848, nearly all the watering-places in the Prusso-Rhenane provinces, and in Bavaria, and Hesse, Na.s.sau, and Baden, contained Kursaals, where gambling was openly carried on. These existed at Aix-la-Chapelle, Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, Ems, Kissengen, and at Spa, close to the Prussian frontier, in Belgium. It is due to the fierce democrats who revolted against the monarchs of the defunct Holy Alliance, to say that they utterly swept away the gambling-tables in Rhenish-Prussia, and in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Herr Hecker, of the red republican tendencies, and the astounding wide-awake hat, particularly distinguished himself in the latter place by his iconoclastic animosity to _Roulette_ and _Rouge et Noir_. When dynastic "order" was restored the Rhine gaming tables were re-established. The Prussian Government, much to its honour, has since shut up the gambling houses at that resort for decayed n.o.bility and ruined livers, Aix-la-Chapelle. A motion was made in the Federal Diet, sitting at Frankfort, to constrain the smaller governments, in the interest of the Germanic good name generally, to close their _tripots_, and in some measure the Federal authorities succeeded. The only existing continental gaming houses authorized by government are now the two Badens, Spa (of which the lease is nearly expired, and will not be renewed), Monaco (capital of the ridiculous little Italian princ.i.p.ality, of which the suzerain is a scion of the house of "Grimaldi"), Malmoe, in Sweden, too remote to do much harm, and HOMBOURG. This last still flourishes greatly, and I am afraid is likely to flourish, though happily in isolation; for, as I have before remarked, the "concession" or privilege of the place has been guaranteed for a long period of years to come by the expectant dynasty of Hesse-Darmstadt. "_C'est fait_," "It is all settled," said the host of the Hotel de France to me, rubbing his hands exultingly when I mentioned the matter. But, _Quis custodiet custodes?_ Hesse-Darmstadt has guaranteed the "administration of Hesse-Hombourg, but who is to guarantee Hesse-Darmstadt? A battalion of French infantry would, it seems to me, make short work of H. D., lease guarantees, Federal contingent, and all. I must mention, in conclusion, that within a very few years we had, if we have not still, a licensed gaming house in our exquisitely moral British dominions. This was in that remarkably "tight little island" at the mouth of the Elbe, Heligoland, which we so queerly possess--Puffendorf, Grotius, and Vattel, or any other writers on the _Jus gentium_, would be puzzled to tell why, or by what right. I was at Hamburg in the autumn of 1856, crossed over to Heligoland one day on a pleasure trip, and lost some money there, at a miniature _Roulette_ table, much frequented by joyous Israelites from the mainland, and English "soldier officers" in mufti. I did not lose much of my temper, however, for the odd, quaint little place pleased me. Not so another Roman citizen, or English travelling gent., who losing, perhaps, seven-and-sixpence, wrote a furious letter to the "Times," complaining of such horrors existing under the British flag, desecration of the English name, and so forth. Next week the lieutenant-governor, by "order," put an end to _Roulette_ at Heligoland; but play on a diminutive scale has since, I have been given to understand, recommenced there without molestation.

(71) Mr Sala is here in error. Colton was a prosperous gambler throughout, and committed suicide to avoid a surgical operation. A notice of the Rev. C. Colton will be found in the sequel.

'We gamble in England at the Stock Exchange, we gamble on horse-races all the year round; but there is something more than the mere eventuality of a chance that prompts us to the _enjeu;_ there is mixed up with our eagerness for the stakes the most varied elements of business and pleasure; cash-books, ledgers, divident-warrants, indignation meetings of Venezuelan bond-holders, coupons, cases of champagne, satin-skinned horses with plaited manes, grand stands, pretty faces, bright flags, lobster salads, cold lamb, fortune-telling gipsies, barouches-and-four, and "our Aunt Sally." High play is still rife in some aristocratic clubs; there are prosperous gentlemen who wear clean linen every day, and whose names are still in the Army List, who make their five or six hundred a year by Whist-playing, and have nothing else to live upon; in East-end coffee-shops, sallow-faced Jew boys, itinerant Sclavonic jewellers, and brawny German sugar-bakers, with sticky hands, may be found glozing and wrangling over their beloved cards and dominoes, and screaming with excitement at the loss of a few pence.

There are yet some occult nooks and corners, nestling in unsavoury localities, on pa.s.sing which the policeman, even in broad daylight, cannot refrain from turning his head a little backwards--as though some bedevilments must necessarily be taking place directly he has pa.s.sed--where, in musty back parlours, by furtive lamplight, with doors barred, bolted, and sheeted with iron, some wretched, cheating gambling goes on at unholy hours. Chicken-hazard is scotched, not killed; but a poor, weazened, etiolated biped is that once game-bird now. And there is Doncaster, every year--Doncaster, with its subscription-rooms under authority, winked at by a pious corporation, patronized by n.o.bles and gentlemen supporters of the turf, and who are good enough, sometimes, to make laws for us plebeians in the Houses of Lords and Commons. There is Doncaster, with policemen to keep order, and admit none but "respectable" people--subscribers, who fear Heaven and honour the Queen.

Are you aware, my Lord Chief-Justice, are you aware, Mr Attorney, Mr Solicitor-General, have you the slightest notion, ye Inspectors of Police, that in the teeth of the law, and under its very eyes, a shameless gaming-house exists in moral Yorks.h.i.+re, throughout every Doncaster St Leger race-week? Of course you haven't; never dreamed of such a thing--never could, never would. Hie you, then, and prosecute this wretched gang of betting-touts, congregating at the corner of Bride Lane, Fleet Street; quick, lodge informations against this publican who has suffered card-playing to take place, raffles, or St Leger sweeps to be held in his house. "You have seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar, and the creature run from the cur. There thou might'st behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office." You have--very well.

Take crazy King Lear's words as a text for a sermon against legislative inconsistencies, and come back with me to Hombourg Kursaal.'

CHAPTER VII. GAMBLING IN BRIGHTON IN 1817.

The subject of English gambling may be ill.u.s.trated by a series of events which happened at Brighton in 1817, when an inquiry respecting the gaming carried on at the libraries led to many important disclosures.

It appears that a warrant was granted on the oath of a Mr William Clarke, against William Wright and James Ford, charged with feloniously stealing L100. But the prosecutor did not appear in court to prove the charge. It was quite evident, therefore, that the law had been abused in the transaction, and the magistrate, Sergeant Runnington, directed warrants to be issued for the immediate appearance of the prosecutor and Timothy O'Mara, as an evidence; but they absconded, and the learned Sergeant discharged the prisoners.

The matter then took a different turn. The same William Wright, before charged with 'stealing' the L100, was now examined as a witness to give evidence upon an examination against Charles Walker, of the Marine Library, for keeping an unlawful Gaming House.

This witness stated that he was engaged, about five weeks before, to act as _punter_ or player (that is, in this case, a sham player or decoy) to a table called _Noir, rouge, tout le deux_ (evidently a name invented to evade the statute, if possible), by William Clarke, the prosecutor, before-mentioned; that the table was first carried to the back room of Donaldson's Library, where it continued for three or four days, when Donaldson discharged it from his premises.

He said he soon got into the confidence of Clarke, who put him up to the secrets of playing. The firm consisted of O'Mara, Pollett, Morley, and Clarke. There was not much playing at Donaldson's. Afterwards the table was removed into Broad Street, but the landlady quickly sent it away. It was then carried to a room over Walker's Library, where a rent was paid of twelve guineas per week, showing plainly the profits of the speculation.

Several gentlemen used to frequent the table, among whom was one who lost L125.

Clarke asked the witness if he thought the person who lost his money was rich? And being answered in the affirmative, it was proposed that he, William Wright, should invite the gentleman to dinner, to let him have what wine he liked, and to spare no expense to get him drunk.

The gentleman was induced to play again, and endeavour to recover his money. As he had nothing but large bills, to a considerable amount, he was prevailed on to go to London, in company with the witness, who was to take care and bring him back. One of the firm, Pollett, wrote a letter of recommendation to a Mr Young, to get the bills discounted at his broker's. They returned to Brighton, and the witness apprized the firm of his arrival. They wanted him to come that evening, but the witness _TOLD THE GENTLEMAN OF HIS SUSPICIONS_--that during their absence a _FALSE TABLE_ had been subst.i.tuted.

The witness, however, returned to his employers that evening, when the firm advanced him L100, and Ford, another punter of the sort, L100, to back with the gentleman as a blind--so that when the signal was given to put upon black or red, they were to put their stakes--by which means the gentleman would follow; and they calculated upon fleecing him of five or six thousand pounds in the course of an hour. According to his own account, the witness told the gentleman of this trick; and the following morning the latter went with him, to know if this nefarious dealing has been truly represented.

On entering the library they met Walker, who wished them better success, but trembled visibly. At the door leading into the room porters were stationed; and, as soon as they entered, Walker ordered it to be bolted, for the sake of privacy; but as soon as the gentleman ascended the dark staircase, he became alarmed at the appearance of men in the room, and returned to the porter, and, by a timely excuse, was allowed to pa.s.s.

At this table Clarke generally dealt, and O'Mara played. It was for not restoring the L100 to the firm that the charge of felony was laid against the witness--after the escape of the gentleman; but an offer of L100 was made to him, after his imprisonment, if he would not give his evidence of the above facts and transactions.

The evidence of the other witness, Ford, confirmed all the material facts of the former, and the gentleman himself, the intended victim, substantiated the evidence of Wright--as to putting him in possession of their nefarious designs.

When the gentleman found that he had been cheated of the L125, he went to Walker to demand back his money. Walker, in the utmost confusion, went into the room, and returned with a proposal to allow L100. This he declined to take, and immediately laid the information before Mr Sergeant Runnington.

The learned Sergeant forcibly recapitulated the evidence, and declared that in the whole course of his professional duties he had never heard such a disclosure of profligacy and villainy, combined with every species of wickedness. In a strain of pointed animadversion he declared it to be an imperative duty,--however much his private feelings might be wounded in seeing a reputable tradesman of the town convicted of such nefarious pursuits,--to order warrants to be issued against all parties concerned as rogues and vagrants.

At the next hearing of the case the court was crowded to excess; and the ma.s.s of evidence deposed before the magistrates threw such a light on the system of gambling, that they summarily put a stop to the Cobourg and Loo tables at the various public establishments.

At the first examination, the 'gentleman' before mentioned, a Mr Mackenzie, said he had played _Rouge et Noir_ at Walker's, and had lost L125. He saw O'Mara there, but he appeared as a player, not a banker; the only reason for considering him as one of the proprietors of the table, arose from the information of the witnesses Wright and Ford.

On this evidence, Mr Sergeant Runnington called on O'Mara and Walker for their defence, observing that, according to the statements before him, there appeared sufficient ground for considering O'Mara as a rogue and vagabond; and for subjecting Mr Walker to penalties for keeping a house or room wherein he permitted unlawful games to be played. O'Mara affirmed that the whole testimony of Wright and Ford with respect to him was false; that he had been nine years a resident housekeeper in Brighton, and was known by, and had rendered essential services to, many respectable individuals who lived in the town, and to many n.o.ble persons who were occasional visitors. He seemed deeply penetrated by the intimation that he could be whipped, or otherwise treated as a vagabond; and said, that if time were allowed him to collect evidence, and obtain legal a.s.sistance, he could disprove the charge, or at least invalidate the evidence of the two accusers.

In consequence of these representations, the case was adjourned to another day, when, so much was the expectation excited by the rumour of the affair, that at the opening of the court the hall was crowded almost to suffocation, and all the avenues were completely beset.

O'Mara appeared, with his counsel, the celebrated Mr Adolphus--the Ballantyne of his day--of Old Bailey renown and forensic prowess.

Mr Sergeant Runnington very obligingly stated to Mr Adolphus the previous proceeding, directed the depositions to be laid before him, and allowed him time to peruse them. Mr Adolphus having gone through the doc.u.ment, requested that the witnesses might be brought into court, that he might cross-question them separately; which being ordered, Wright was first put forward--the man who had received the L100, enlightened the Mr Mackenzie, and who was charged with feloniously stealing the above amount.

After the usual questions, very immaterial in the present case, but answered, the witness went on to say that, O'Mara called at his lodgings and said, if he (Wright) could not persuade Mr Mackenzie to come from London, he was not to leave him, but write to him (O'Mara), and he would go to town, and win all his money. He had, on a former occasion, told the witness, that he could win all Mackenzie's money at child's play--that he could toss up and win ninety times out of one hundred; he had told both him and Ford, that if they met with any gentleman who did not like the game of _Rouge et Noir_, and would bring them to his house, he was always provided with cards, dice, and backgammon tables, to win their money from them.

The learned counsel then cross-questioned the witness as to various matters, in the usual way, but tending, of course, to damage him by the answers which the questions necessitated--a horrible, but, perhaps, necessary ordeal perpetuated in our law-procedure. In these answers there was something like prevarication; so that the magistrate, Mr Sergeant Runnington, asked the witness at the close of the examination, whether he had any previous acquaintance with the gentlemen who had engaged him at half-a-crown a game, and then so candily communicated to him all their schemes? He said, none whatever. 'But,' said the Sergeant, 'you were in the daily habit of playing at this public table for the purpose of deceiving the persons who might come there?' The witness answered--'I was.'

The witness Ford fared no better in the cross-examination, and Mr Sergeant Runnington, at its close, asked him the same question that he had addressed to Wright, respecting his playing at the table, and received the same answer.

Mr Mackenzie did not appear, and there was no further evidence. Mr Adolphus said that if he were called upon to make any defence for his client upon a charge so supported, he was ready to do it; but, as he must make many observations, not only on the facts, but on the _LAW_, he was anxious if possible to avoid doing so, as he did not wish to say too much about the law respecting gaming before so large and mixed an audience.(72)

(72) See Chapter XI. for the views of Mr Adolphus here alluded to.

Two witnesses were called, who gave evidence which was damaging to the character of Ford, stating that he told them he was in a conspiracy against O'Mara and some other moneyed men, from whom they should get three or four hundred pounds, and if witness would conceal from O'Mara his (Ford's) real name, he should have his share of the money, and might go with him and Wright to Brussels.

After hearing these witnesses, Mr Sergeant Runnington, without calling on Mr Adolphus for any further defence of his client, p.r.o.nounced the judgment of the Bench.

He reviewed the transaction from its commencement, and stated the impression, to the disadvantage of O'Mara, which the tale originally told by the two witnesses was calculated to make. But, on hearing the cross-examination of those witnesses, and seeing no evidence against the defendant but from sources so impure and corrupt--recollecting the severe penalties of the Vagrant Acts, and sitting there not merely as a judge, but also exercising the functions of a jury, he could not bring himself to convict on such evidence. The witnesses, impure as they were, were _NOT SUPPORTED BY MR MACKENZIE IN ANY PARTICULAR_, except the fact of his losing money, at a time when O'Mara did not appear as a proprietor of the table, but as a player like himself. O'Mara must therefore be discharged; but the two witnesses would not be so fortunate. From their own mouths it appeared that they had been using subtle craft to deceive and impose upon his Majesty's subjects, by playing or betting at unlawful games, and had no legal or visible means of gaining a livelihood; the court, therefore, adjudged them to be rogues and vagabonds, and committed them, in execution, to the gaol at Lewes, there to remain till the next Quarter Sessions, and then to be further dealt with according to law. A short private conference followed between the magistrates and Mr Adolphus, the result of which was that Mr Walker was not proceeded against, but entered into a recognizance not to permit any kind of gaming to be carried on in his house.

CHAPTER VIII. GAMBLING AT THE GERMAN BATHING-PLACES.----

BADEN AND ITS CONVERSATION HOUSE.