At first gambling was carried on only at night. The fascination of the game, however, has now become so great, that day gambling houses have been opened in the lower part of the city. These are located in Broadway, below Fulton street, and in one or two other streets within the immediate neighborhood of Wall street.
These “houses,” as they are called, are really nothing more than rooms. They are located on the top floor of a building, the rest of which is taken up with stores, offices, etc. They are managed on a plan similar to the night gambling houses, and the windows are all carefully closed with wooden shutters, to prevent any sound being heard without. The rooms are elegantly furnished, brilliantly lighted with gas, and liquors and refreshments are in abundance. As the stairway is thronged with persons passing up and down, at all hours of the day, no one is noticed in entering the building for the purpose of play. The establishment has its “runners” and “ropers in,” like the night houses, who are paid a percentage on the winnings from their victims, and the proprietor of the day house is generally the owner of a night house higher up town.
Square games are rarely played in these houses. The victim is generally fleeced. Men who gamble in stocks, curbstone brokers, and others, vainly endeavor to make good a part of their losses at these places. They are simply unsuccessful. Clerks, office-boys, and others, who can spend but a few minutes and lose only a few dollars at a time, are constantly seen in these hells. The aggregate of these slight winnings by the bank is very great in the course of the day. Pickpockets and
thieves are also seen here in considerable numbers. They do not come to practise their arts, for they would be shown no mercy if they should do so, but come to gamble away their plunder, or its proceeds.
It is not necessary to speak of the evils of gambling, of the effect of the vice upon society. I have merely to describe the practice as it prevails here. New York is full of the wrecks it has made. Respectable and wealthy families there are by the score whose means have been squandered on the green cloth. There are widows and orphans here whose husbands and fathers have been driven into suicide by gambling losses. The State Prisons hold men whose good names have been blasted, and whose souls have been stained with crime in consequence of this vice. Yet the evil is suffered to grow, and no honest effort is made to check it.
II. LOTTERIES.
The lottery business of New York is extensive, and, though conducted in violation of the law, those who carry it on make scarcely a show of secrecy.
The principal lottery office of the city is located on Broadway, near St. Paul’s church. It is ostensibly a broker’s office, and the windows display the usual collection of gold and silver coins, bills, drafts, etc. At the rear end of the front room is a door which leads into the office in which lottery tickets are sold. It is a long, narrow apartment, lighted from the ceiling, and so dark that the gas is usually kept burning. A high counter extends along two sides of the room, and the walls back of this are lined with handbills setting forth the schemes of the various lotteries. Two large black-boards are affixed to the wall back of the main counter, and on these are written the numbers as soon as the drawings have been made. There is always a crowd of anxious faces in this room at the hour when the drawings are received.
The regular lotteries for which tickets are sold here, are the
Havana Lottery, which is conducted by the Government of the Island of Cuba, the Kentucky State Lottery, drawn at Covington, Kentucky, and the Missouri State Lottery, drawn at St. Louis, Mo.