And the pale vigils keep of cards and dice—
’Twill on their charms sad havoc make, ye fair!
Which “rouge” in vain shall labor to repair.
Beauties will grow mere hags, toasts wither’d jades,
Frightful and ugly as the—Queen of Spades.
Oxonian in Town, 1767.
GAMBLING IN CLEVELAND.
With a population estimated at 250,000, Cleveland supports a dozen public gambling houses, half a dozen private poker clubs and two policy shops. In deference to unfavorable public sentiment, which forms the basis of restrictive measures enforced by the police, all forms of gambling are of necessity conducted in an exceedingly quiet manner. As a rule, all public gaming is conducted behind locked doors and applicants for admission[admission] are subjected to close scrutiny. For thirty years but one line of policy has been pursued by the municipal authorities toward gambling houses, and in all that time public opinion has been uniformly hostile to the business. The policy of the authorities has been to restrict, rather than to abolish, gambling. They have endeavored to place the games, as far as possible, beyond the reach of uninitiated and guileless citizens who would probably prove easy victims, and to limit their patronage to those whose experience has made them more familiar with the wiles of the professional gamester.
There is not a gambling house in Cleveland conducted on the ground floor, nor is there one run with open doors. With a solitary exception, the gambling rooms, of which there are about a dozen, are located in the second story of the business blocks. The exception referred to is a Chinese “joint,” operated in connection with a Mongolian laundry in a basement.
In 1866, there were but a half dozen gambling establishments in the city, and nearly all the six opened have commenced operations within the past eight years. There have, however, been several gambling rooms opened and conducted for only a short time, whose doors were closed because of the slender resources of the “bank,” which could not sustain the loss of a few thousand dollars. Within the past few years the police have emphatically insisted that the gambling rooms be kept hidden from public gaze. The object undoubtedly has been, as before intimated, so to arrange matters that only those who were obstinately bent on play, could find a place in which to stake their earnings on the turn of a card.