The History of Gambling in England

CHAPTER X

Select Committee on Gaming, 1844 – Evidence.

Such, then, was gambling, when the Select Committee on gaming sat in 1844, and Mr (afterwards Sir) Richard Mayne, in his evidence, shows the craftiness of the gaming-house keepers, and the difficulties of the police in obtaining a conviction. He says: —

“Superintendent Baker was the Superintendent who entered all those houses. With the permission of the Committee, I will read his report, in which he states the difficulties he has met with: ‘I beg, most respectfully, to lay before the Commissioners a few observations for their consideration, being extremely anxious that something more should be done respecting the gaming-houses, to put them down, which are the cause of so many young men’s ruin, and, at the same time, show to the Commissioners the difficulties I have to contend with, before an entry can be effected; from the reluctance of the housekeepers to make the required affidavits, from not wishing to have their names brought forward in such matters; also, from the great difficulty in gaining an entrance to a gaming-house, from their extreme caution and watchfulness, besides the strength of their doors and fastenings, which gives them ample time to remove any implement of gaming from the premises: their vigilance is such that it is impossible to obtain an entry for the purpose of seeing play, unless treachery is used with some of the players, which is attended by danger and great expense. On the slightest alarm, the cloths, which are thrown loose over a common table, &c., are, in one moment, removed, and secreted about the persons of the keepers, &c.; and, as the present law stands, the police are not empowered to search them at all: there are no complaints from the housekeepers respecting the gaming-houses, and, in every instance of putting them down, the police have been obliged almost to compel them to go to the police court to swear to the necessary affidavits; such has been their reluctance. As the present law stands, before I can enter a gaming-house with safety, I am obliged to go through the following forms: 1st, to make such inquiry as to leave no doubt that gaming is carried on in a house; 2nd, to make a report of the circumstance to the Commissioners; 3rd, to show the said report to the housekeepers residing in the parish and neighbourhood where the house is situated, and the offence carried on, for them to make the necessary affidavits; 4th, to prepare affidavits for the housekeepers to sign, in the presence of the magistrates; 5th, to make a report of the same to the Commissioners when sworn to; 6th, to make out the Commissioners’ warrant for me and the police under my command to enter; 7th, to endeavour, if possible, to get an officer in disguise into the gaming-house to witness play being carried on, previous to my entry, which is the most difficult task to encounter, as no one is admitted unless brought there by a Bonnet or a play-man, as a pigeon or freshman, commonly known as Punters or Flats. Since my entry into No. 34 St James’s Street, kept by Isaiah Smart, whose son was killed by a fall from the roof in endeavouring to escape from the police, there is no doubt the gamblers have exercised the greatest ingenuity in their power in order to entrap me into a false entry on their premises by lighting up the rooms as if play was going on; employing persons to watch, both outside and in, to give the alarm on the appearance of any of the police passing; so that, if I was tempted to make an entry without taking the precaution of having an officer inside to prove gaming, there is not the least doubt but that they would instantly catch at the opportunity of bringing an action against me for trespass, &c., and thereby effect my ruin. I have received information that such is the case in the event of my making one false step, and which I have every reason to believe is true.’”

Crockford was examined, but the Committee got very little out of that old fox, except the fact that he had given up all active connection with the establishment in St James’s Street for over four years.

Mr Mayne was recalled on the 9th May 1844, and gave evidence that, two nights previously, an entry was made into all houses, known to be gaming-houses in town, seventeen in number, with the result of a fine haul of men, money, and gaming implements.

The outcome of the Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament was the passing, on 8th August 1845, of 8-9 Vic., c. 109, “An Act to amend the Law against Games and Wagers” – and for many years afterwards professional gaming-houses in London were a tradition of the past. Now, however, they abound, thanks to the laxity of the law with regard to so-called clubs.

Here, then, ends the account of this phase of gambling, as it has been thought inexpedient to give any modern instances of play at so-called Clubs, or Card-sharping.

CHAPTER XI

Wagers and Betting – Samson – Greek and Roman betting – In the 17th Century – “Lusty Packington” – The rise of betting in the 18th Century – Walpole’s story of White’s – Betting in the House of Commons – Story by Voltaire – Anecdotes of betting – Law suit concerning the Chevalier d’Eon.

Betting, or rather, that peculiar form of wager which consists in a material pledge in corroboration of controverted assertions, is of very ancient date, and we meet with it in one of the early books of the Bible, see Judges xiv. where in vv. 12, 13, Samson makes a distinct bet – owns he has lost in v. 18, and pays his bet, v. 19.

“12. And Samson said unto them, I will now put a riddle unto you: if ye can certainly declare it me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty sheets and thirty changes of garments.

“13. But, if ye cannot declare it me, then shall you give me thirty sheets and thirty changes of garments. And they said unto him, put forth thy riddle that we may hear it.

“14. And he said unto them, out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not, in three days, expound the riddle.

“15. And it came to pass, on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson’s wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire: have ye called us to take that we have? is it not so?

“16. And Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto her, I have not told it my father, nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee?

“17. And she wept before him the seven days, while the feast lasted; and it came to pass, on the seventh day, that he told her, because she lay sore upon him: and she told the riddle to the children of her people.

“18. And the men of the city said unto him, on the seventh day, before the sun went down, what is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said unto them, if ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.

“19. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave changes of raiment unto them which expounded the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and he went up to his father’s house.

“20. But Samson’s wife was given to his companion, whom he had used as his friend.”

Now, in this very ancient story, we find embodied as much roguery and crime as in any modern turf episode. Samson bet without any means of paying, if he lost: he lost, and was a defaulter. But, to pay this “debt of honour,” he had recourse to wholesale murder and robbery – to satisfy men, who to his own knowledge, had (to use a modern expression) “tampered with the stable.”

The early Greeks betted, as we find in Homer’s Iliad, b. xxiii. 485-7 where Idomeneus offers a bet to the lesser Ajax to back his own opinion:

In Homer’s Odyssey, xxiii. 78, Eurycleia wagers her life to Penelope that Ulysses has returned: Aristophanes in his Equites, 791; Acharnes, 772, 1115; and Nebulæ, 644, gives examples of wagers; and, in the eighth idyll of Theocritus, Daphins proposes a bet to Menalcas about a singing match.

Among the Romans, Virgil tells us of a wager in his third Eclogue of the Bucolics, 28-50, between Menalcas and Damœtas, which is virtually the same as that of Theocritus, and Valerius Maximus tells us how a triumph was awarded by the senate to Lutatius, the Consul, who had defeated the Carthaginian fleet. The prætor Valerius, having also been present in the action, asserted that the victory was his, and that a triumph was due to him also. The question came before the judge; but not until Valerius had first, in support of his assertion, deposited a stake, against which Lutatius deposited another. But in classical time they seem to have known little about odds.

The word wager is an English word – and was spelt in Middle English, Wageoure, or Wajour, as in The Babee’s Book.

It was in early use, for we have the Wager of Battel, which was a practical bet between two men as to the justice of their cause. This ordeal was in force until 1819, when it was done away with by 59 Geo. III., c. 46.

In Shakespeare’s time betting was common, and the practice of giving and taking odds was well known, as we may see in Hamlet, Act v. s. 2, where Osrick, speaking to Hamlet, says, “The King, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary horses; against which he hath imponed, as I take it, six French Rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdles, hangers and so.” In Cymbeline, Act i. s. 5, we have a bet, which is so serious that it has to be recorded. Iachimo says, “I dare thereupon pawn the moiety of my estate to your ring, which, in my opinion, o’ervalues it something,” and, ultimately, ten thousand crowns are laid against the ring, and Iachimo says, “I will fetch my gold, and have our two wagers recorded.”

By the way, there was an epitaph on Combe, the usurer, which has been attributed to Shakespeare, which intimates the laying of odds.

It is recorded of Sir John Packington, called “Lusty Packington” (Queen Elizabeth called him “her Temperance”), that he entered into articles to swim against three noblemen for £3000 from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich; but the queen, by her special command, prevented the bet being carried out.

Howell in his Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ says: “If one would try a petty conclusion how much smoke there is in a pound of Tobacco, the ashes will tell him: for, let a pound be exactly weighed, and the ashes kept charily and weighed afterwards, what wants of a pound weight in the ashes, cannot be denied to have been smoke which evaporated into air. I have been told that Sir Walter Rawleigh won a wager of Queen Elizabeth upon this nicety.”

Men betted, but their wagers are not recorded until the eighteenth century, and one of the earliest of these is told in Malcolm’s Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the eighteenth century. “Mrs Crackenthorpe, the Female Tatler of 1709, tells us ‘that four worthy Senators lately threw their hats into a river, laid a crown each whose hat should first swim to the mill, and ran hallooing after them; and he that won the prize, was in a greater rapture than if he had carried the most dangerous point in Parliament.’”

“There was an established Cock pit in Prescot Street, Goodman’s Fields, 1712: there the Gentlemen of the East entertained themselves, while the Nobles and others of the West were entertained by the edifying exhibition of the agility of their running footmen. His Grace of Grafton declared his man was unrivalled in speed; and the Lord Cholmondeley betted him that his excelled even the unrivalled; accordingly, the ground was prepared for a two mile heat, in Hyde Park; the race was run, and one of the parties was victor, but which, my informant does not say.”

“I have frequently observed, in the course of my researches, the strange methods and customs peculiar to gaming, horse racing, dice and wagers; the latter are generally governed by whim and extreme folly. We have already noticed Noblemen running their Coaches and Footmen. In 1729, a Poulterer of Leadenhall Market betted £50, he would walk 202 times round the area of Upper Moorfields in 27 hours, and, accordingly, proceeded at the rate of five miles an hour on the amusing pursuit, to the infinite improvement of his business, and great edification of hundreds of spectators. Wagers are now a favourite custom with too many of the Londoners; they very frequently, however, originate over the bottle, or the porter pot.”

“To characterise the follies of the day, it will be necessary to add to the account of the walking man, another, of a hopping man, who engaged to hop 500 yards, in 50 hops, in St James’s Park, which he performed in 46. This important event occurred in December 1731.”

In No. 145 of the Spectator (16th Aug. 1711) is a letter about the prevalence of laying wagers. “Among other things which your own experience must suggest to you, it will be very obliging if you please to take notice of wagerers.

“Not long ago, I was relating that I had read such a passage in Tacitus; up starts my young gentleman, in a full company, and, pulling out his purse, offered to lay me ten guineas, to be staked, immediately, in that gentleman’s hands, pointing to one smoking at another table, that I was utterly mistaken. I was dumb for want of ten guineas; he went on unmercifully to triumph over my ignorance how to take him up, and told the whole room he had read Tacitus twenty times over, and such a remarkable incident as that, could not escape him. He has, at this time, three considerable wagers depending between him and some of his companions, who are rich enough to hold an argument with him. He has five guineas upon questions in geography, two that the Isle of Wight is a peninsula, and three guineas to one, that the world is round. We have a gentleman comes to our coffee house, who deals mightily in antique scandal; my disputant has laid him twenty pieces upon a point of history.”

It was in the early part of the eighteenth century that betting was made a part of professional gambling, as we read in Smollett’s Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom. On his return to England “he perceived that gaming was now managed in such a manner, as rendered skill and dexterity of no advantage; for the spirit of play having overspread the land, like a pestilence, raged to such a degree of madness and desperation, that the unhappy people who were infected, laid aside all thoughts of amusement, economy, or caution, and risqued their fortunes upon issues equally extravagant, childish and absurd.

“The whole mystery of the art was reduced to the simple exercise of tossing up a guinea, and the lust of laying wagers, which they indulged to a surprising pitch of ridiculous intemperance. In one corner of the room might be heard a pair of lordlings running their grandmothers against each other, that is, betting sums on the longest liver; in another, the success of the wager depended upon the sex of the landlady’s next child: one of the waiters happening to drop down in an apoplectic fit, a certain noble peer exclaimed, ‘Dead, for a thousand pounds.’ The challenge was immediately accepted; and when the master of the house sent for a surgeon to attempt the cure, the nobleman, who set the price upon the patient’s head, insisted upon his being left to the efforts of nature alone, otherwise the wager should be void: nay, when the landlord harped upon the loss he should sustain by the death of a trusty servant, his lordship obviated the objection, by desiring that the fellow might be charged in the bill.”

Horace Walpole in a letter to Sir H. Mann (1 Sep. 1750) tells a similar tale. “They have put in the papers a good story made on White’s; a man dropped down dead at the door, was carried in; the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or not, and when they were going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the fairness of the bet.” But there is no such bet mentioned in White’s betting book.

They even betted in the House of Commons. In the course of a debate Mr Pulteney charged Sir Robert Walpole with misquoting Horace; the prime minister replied by offering to bet that he had not done so, and the wager was accepted. The clerk of the House was called upon to decide the question, and declared Pulteney right; upon which Sir Robert threw a guinea across the House, to be picked up by his opponent, with the remark that it was the first public money he had touched for a long time.

Brookes’ betting book has C. J. Fox’s name frequently. In 1744 he bet Lord Northington that he would be called to the Bar within four years time. In 1755, he received one guinea from Lord Bolingbroke, upon condition of paying him a thousand pounds when the debts of the country amounted to a hundred and seventy-one millions; an event Fox lived to see come to pass.