There is also a series of statutes dealing with houses kept for playing unlawful games.[[323]]
Thus, 33 Henry VIII., c. 9, prohibited the keeping of any common house or place of dicing table or carding, or any other manner of game then prohibited or thereafter to be invented. 13 George II., c. 19, s. 9, inflicts penalties on any person keeping any office, table, or place for the games of passage or games with dice, except backgammon. 18 George II., c. 34, prohibits the keeping of any house, room, or playing roulet, or roly-poly, or any game with cards or dice already prohibited by law. It is stated in Hawkins (Pleas of the Crown, I. 725) that these statutes did not aim at occasional gaming for recreation at an inn which was not kept for the purpose. The games, too, were only unlawful sub modo, and were not prohibited in a man’s private grounds. Finally, there are the provisions against keeping houses for lotteries, the principal statute on this subject being 42 George III., c. 119, which, as has been shown above, makes it penal to keep any “office or place” for “Littlegoes.”
Unlawful games.
In some few cases particular games have been declared unlawful.
Thus the Statute 12 Richard II., c. 6, made tennis, football, quoits, dice, unlawful when played by artificers and labourers. But this Statute was repealed by Statute 21 Jas. I. Section 16, of 33 Henry VIII., prohibited the same games with the addition of cards, dice, talles, and bowls, to labourers and mariners or any serving man.
18 Geo. II., c. 34.
By 2 George II., c. 28, power is given to justices to commit all persons to prison found playing at any unlawful game.
12 George II., c. 28, s. 2, made the games of faro, ace of hearts, basket and hazard, illegal as lotteries, inflicted the same penalties as for setting up a lottery, and £50 on the players.
The Statutes 13 George II., c. 19, and 18 George II., c. 34, in adding other games to the list, |Players.| expressly imposed the same penalties on the players or adventurers in the games prohibited.[[324]] As has been suggested above, in dealing with these matters under the head of lotteries, to which they more properly belong, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that persons playing a friendly game of roulette in a private house or a club would be liable under these statutes, although by 46 George III., c. 148, proceedings must be taken in the name of the Attorney-General. From the recent decision in the case of Turpin v. Jenks,[[325]] that any which is a game of chance or of chance and skill combined is now an unlawful game, if not in the sense of being penal, at any rate so as to make it unlawful to keep a house for the purpose of such games. There would then seem to be three legal consequences of a game being unlawful;
(1) Where the statute inflicts a penalty;