“It is an extraordinary and uncomfortable fact that no set of men are more open to seduction than the servants of the nobility, and the menials of club-houses, an instance of which occurred a few months since, in the case of a servant of the Athenæum Club, who was inveigled into a house in the Quadrant, where he lost, in two or three days, a considerable sum of money belonging to his employers.
“The sum annually lost by the servants of the present day may reasonably be laid at one million and a half sterling. At most of the middle class gambling houses, play is going on from three o’clock, p. m. to five or six o’clock a. m. In the afternoon, from three to seven, it is called morning play, being generally rouge-et-noir or roulette.
“As soon as the proprietor of a ‘crown-house’ amasses money enough to appear on the turf, and becomes known at Tattersall’s as a speculator on horse-racing, he is dubbed a gentleman. Associating now with another class of men, a high ambitious spirit prompts him to open a superior house of play, where the upper class of gamblers and young nobility may not be ashamed of meeting together. All petty players are excluded. When he has accomplished his object he deems himself in the high road for the acquirement of a splendid fortune, being now master of a concern where money and estate are as regularly bought and sold as any commodity in a public market; one man of fashion betraying another—the most intimate and bosom friends colleaguing with these monsters for the purpose of sacrificing each other to the god Plutus, instances of which occur in this viciated town as often as the sun rises and sets.
“It might be thought invidious to mention names by innuendo, but every man of the world, or rather of the London world (which comprehends some thousand swindlers intermingled with the same number of nobility and gentry), must have a knowledge of those characters who have elevated themselves from the lowest state in society by gambling, to associate on terms of equality with nobles. One married his daughters to peers of the realm, and was treated with respect daily at the table of those who enact laws for the punishment of swindlers, and also of bishops who expatiate daily against all kinds of vice, including that of gambling, and the sin of countenancing those who promote it. Another, whose confederate was executed for poisoning horses, to secure for himself and his honorable employer a large sum of money, now stalks through the halls of our proud Norman, but too susceptible aristocracy, with as much freedom and nonchalance as one who could trace his ancestry back to William the Conqueror, and was possessed of a pure and unblemished reputation. When the history of this individual and that of six others, who, to use their own phraseology, have rowed through life together in the same boat, are before the world, scenes will be developed which will stand as beacons to warn future generations against coming in contact with such characters.
“In accordance with the reigning spirit of the day, such persons having acquired money, no matter how, rank as gentlemen, and are qualified to sit at the tables of the nobility. The company of fashionable or club society is that of black-legs, and it would not be difficult for me to name from twenty to thirty individuals at this moment who associate with, and move among, persons of high life, who were, but a few years back, in low vice and penury, and who have possessed themselves of a sum of money certainly not less than from eight to nine millions sterling.
“Again, there are hundreds of others who have amassed from ten to twenty thousand pounds each. Add to these the two or three thousand who annually make smaller sums of money, or manage to keep themselves and families in comfortable style by ‘hokey-pokey’ gambling ways, as Brother Jonathan would say, some estimate may be made of the evil occasioned to society by the movements of these men in it.”
One of the most deplorable phases of gambling in England is that women have figured prominently. Incredible as it may seem, numerous instances are recorded where the honor of wives and daughters has been staked in the desperation of cowardly men. It may be believed that this occurred only when all else had been swept away, and by persons from whom every vestige of manhood had departed. Ethiopians, it is said, have been known to gamble away their wives and children, and Schouten tells of a Chinaman who lost his family in this manner. A similar story is told of a Venetian, by Paschasius Justus, and in the wicked Paris of Louis XV, debauched nobles played at dice for the favor of a notorious courtesan.
English literature contains many allusions to women gamblers. So far did ladies of fashion carry the vice that certain nights for meeting were set apart in their private mansions, at which young and old, married and single, played with a desperation that must have made their husbands and fathers tremble. Professionals, whose morals were not above reproach, were engaged to conduct the games, and thus the women were thrown into association with bad characters, and their names and reputations bandied about in the mouths of the sporting gentry of London.
In 1820, James Lloyd, a harpy who practiced on the credulity of the lower orders by keeping an illegal lottery, was arrested for the twentieth time to answer for the offense. Lloyd was a Methodist preacher, and on Sundays expounded the gospel to his neighbors; the remainder of the week he instructed them in the gambling vice.
“In the same years,” says a writer of the time, “parties of young persons robbed their masters to play at a certain establishment called ‘Morley’s Gambling House,’ in the city of London, and were there ruined. Some were brought to justice at the Old Bailey, others in the madness caused by their losses, destroyed themselves while some escaped to other countries.”