“40. That every person playing at the new guinea table do keep fifty guineas before him.
“41. That every person playing at the twenty guinea table do not keep less than twenty guineas before him.”
Here is an extract from the Club books which shows the style of play. “Mr Thynne having won only 12,000 guineas during the last two months, retired in disgust. March 21, 1772.”
The Club subsequently became Goosetree’s, and after him was taken by a wine merchant and money lender named Brookes, and Brookes’s it is to this day, at 60 St James Street, to which locality it moved from Pall Mall in October 1778.
These, with Arthur’s, were all the clubs for the nobility and gentry, until the Regency, when clubs multiplied. There were any amount of gambling houses, but they were public—but, of course, a club was strictly confined to its members.
So gambling went on merrily among all classes, as we may see by the following notices from the Morning Post:
“5 July 1797. Is Mr Ogden (now called the Newmarket Oracle), the same person who, five-and-twenty years since, was an annual pedestrian to Ascot, covered with dust, amusing himself with pricking in the belt, hustling in the hat, &c., amongst the lowest class of rustics, at the inferior booths of the fair?
“Is D—k—y B—— w, who has now his snug farm, the same person who, some years since, drove post chaise for T—— y of Bagshot, could neither read nor write, and was introduced to the family only by his pre-eminence at cribbage?
“Is Mr Twycross (with his phaeton), the same person who, some years since, became a bankrupt in Tavistock Street, immediately commenced the Man of Fashion at Bath, kept running horses, &c., secundum artem?