The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims (Vol.I&II). Andrew Steinmetz

lease of the Paris authorized gaming houses expired in 1836–7; and the municipality, albeit loath to lose the fat annual revenue, was induced by governmental pressure not to renew it; and it is asserted 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, Nassau, 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 nobility 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 principality, 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 passing 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 passed—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 nobles 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 Yorkshire, 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.

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      The subject of English gambling may be illustrated 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 £100. 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 £100, 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