Gaming house

“ I was the victim of a vice which has brought dishonor upon men who never thought to blush before their fellow men—I was a gamester! I devoted my days to business cheerfully, conscientiously; but at night the demon of the dice-box lured me from my quiet home, and led me to a secret gaming-house in Columbia Street—a house known to all the gamblers of New Orleans, but which flourishes in bold defiance of the law. ”

“ It would appear, also, from the same case that a house or club might still be a common gaming house, if it were kept for the double purpose of social pursuits and gaming, if gaming were one of the objects for which the club was formed, or a house kept open. |Excessive gaming evidence.| It is also expressly laid down that excessive gaming is evidence that a house is a common gaming house. ”

“ In 1831 a gaming-house called the Athenæum was a public scandal. This gaming-hell was situated at the upper end of St. James's Street, on the same side as White's. It was owned by three brothers named Bond, one of whom only, Ephraim, was publicly recognised as the proprietor. ”

“ Many years before the tables at the German resorts were closed by the Prussian Government, M. Blanc was quietly seeking for a suitable spot where his roulette wheels might whirl free from interference and his croupiers deal in unmolested peace.
Gaming-house proprietors seem in one respect to resemble the monks of old, for almost invariably their establishments have been pitched amidst attractive surroundings commanding lovely views. ”

“ The moon was shining brightly at the time, and the young man swore by it, that he would never again enter a gaming house, and he kept his oath. Of course the generosity was but a decoy to entice the youth to further ruin.
HOSPITALITY OF GAMING HOUSES, AND POPULARITY OF CITY MEN AT THEM.
Joseph Atkinson and his wife, who for many years kept a gaming house at No. 15 under the Piazza, Covent Garden, gave daily magnificent play dinners,—cards of invitation for which were sent to the clerks of merchants, bankers, and brokers in the city. ”

“ Before the revolution, gaming was not only tolerated in Paris, but public gaming-houses were then licensed by the government, under the agreeable name of Académies de jeu. There, any one might ruin himself under the immediate superintendance of the police, an officer belonging to which was always present. Besides these academies, women of fashion and impures of the first class were allowed to keep a gaming-table or tripot de jeu, as it was termed, in their own house. ”

“ It used to be said that at one or two of these Hells individuals were kept on the premises whose sole duty lay in being able to swallow the dice in case of a raid by the authorities. Whether this was the case or not, it is certain that there was usually some convenient receptacle contrived in the shutters or elsewhere into which the implements of gaming could be speedily thrown. A house containing a back room sufficiently large to contain forty or fifty people, was the ideal of the proprietors of such places. ”

“ Captain Ferrers carried me the first time that ever I saw any gaming-house, to one, entering into Lincolne's Inn Fields, at the end of Bell Yard, where strange the folly of men to lay and lose much money, and very glad I was to see the manner of a gamester's life, which I see is very miserable and poor and unmanly. ”

“ Our first walk was to the chief attraction here to all visitors, the great gaming-house known as the Cursaal,—which is suggestive of the more appropriate title Curse-all,—where the spacious and elegant gaming-saloons, that have been described so often, were open for play from eleven A. M. to eleven P. M., and which, during the season, are thronged with players at the roulette and rouge-et-noir tables. ”

“ Publicans whose houses are licensed for billiards must not allow persons to play at any time when public-houses are not allowed to be open.
'In order to constitute the house a common gaming house, it is not necessary to prove that any person found playing at any game was playing for any money, wager, or stake. The police may enter the house on the report of a superintendent, and the authority of a commissioner, without the necessity of an allegation of two householders ”

“ About 9 o’clock at night, a party of soldiers and constables, with proper warrants, enter’d a notorious gaming house, behind the Hoop tavern in the Strand, and seiz’d 36 gamblers, and carry’d them to the vestry room at St Martin’s, where the justices were sitting for that purpose; 21 of them, next morning, for want of bail, were committed to the Gatehouse, and the others bound in a recognizance of £80, to answer at the next Sessions; the fine gaming tables, which cost £200, were chopt to pieces, and a great part burnt. ”

“ In the evening, he strolled with Lieberg into the great hall where the company had assembled, intending but to gaze for a moment at the splendour which such a place generally displays, and then to wander out into the walks round about, which had been cut with careful taste to give every attraction to the little town. Very different indeed was the scene presented from that which he had often witnessed before in a Parisian gaming-house. ”

“ Here and there shine out brilliant points, from the decoy-lamps of the gaming-houses; and through the indistinct murmur of the streets comes by fits the sound of music from their hot and crowded precincts.
The only objects left for us to visit are the gaming-tables, whose day has just fairly dawned. We need not wander far in search of one. ”

“ No where is the passion, the rage for play so prevalent, so universal: no where does it cause so much havock and ruin. In every class of society here, gamesters abound. From men revelling in wealth to those scarcely above beggary, every one flies to the gaming-table; so that it follows, as a matter of course, that Paris must contain a great number of Maisons de jeu, or
PUBLIC GAMING-HOUSES.
They are to be met with in all parts of the town, though the head-quarters are in the Palais du Tribunat, or, as it is most commonly called, the Palais Royal. ”

“ The men to be seen gaming in this house differ but very little in appearance from those in Union Square, but there seems to be less discipline amongst them, and more noise and confusion. It is a rare thing to see an intoxicated man in a gambling house; the door-keepers are very particular as to whom they admit, and any disturbance which might call for the interference of the police would be ruinous to their business. ”

“ In former times there was no such thing as gaming at a private house, although there was more deep play at the clubs at that time than ever was before, or has been since. It is lamentable to see lovely woman destroying her health and beauty at six o’clock in the morning at a gaming-table. ”

“ The number of new gaming houses, established at the West-end of the town, is, indeed, a mattter of very serious evil: but they are not likely to decrease while examples of the same nature are held forth in the higher circles of life. It is needless to point out any one of these houses in particular: it is sufficient for us to expose the tricks that are practised at many of them to swindle the unsuspecting young men of fortune, who are entrapped into these whirlpools of destruction. ”

“ As to gaming-houses; such numbers of persons of all ranks have brought themselves, some to the greatest distresses, and others to most shameful and ignominious ends, by frequenting these houses, where gentlemen, sharpers, highwaymen, tradesmen, their servants, nay, often their apprentices, are mixed together ”

“ Thus, at Paris, the Palais Royal, Frascati, and numerous other places, presented gaming houses, whither millions of wretches crowded in search of fortune, but, for the most part, to find only ruin or even death by suicide or duelling, so often resulting from quarrels at the gaming table. ”

“ If scenes like this were enacted at the Groom Porter's, what must have taken place at the other gaming houses? Let two contemporary writers, whose language, though rough, is trustworthy, answer the question. 'Gaming is an Estate to which all the World has a Pretence, tho' few espouse it that are willing to keep either their Estates, or Reputations. I knew two Middlesex Sharpers not long ago, that inherited a West Country Gentleman's Estate, who I believe, wou'd have never made them his Heirs in his last Will and Testament. ”

“ More gaming houses than ever were opened, and then it was that they received the name of Enfers, or 'Hells,' by which they were designated in England. 'The greater number of those who go to the watering-places,' writes a contemporary, 'under the pretext of health, only go after gamesters. In the States-general it is less the interest of the people than the attraction of terrible gambling, that brings together a portion of the nobility. The nature of the play may be inferred from the name of the place at which it takes place in one of the provinces—namely, Enfer. ”

“ They work hard, and they play hard. Gaming is the recreation most indulged in, and the gaming-houses of the western part of Arkansas have branded it with an unenviable notoriety.
One dark summer night, I lounged, as a mere spectator, the different rooms, watching the various games of hazard that were being played. ”

“ Being returned out of Wales into England again, I was no sooner got into London, but thro’ an avaricious Temper, I soon began to haunt most of the Gaming-Houses in Town, which Day and Night were as well cram’d as the Groom-Porter’s Table. In these Schools of inevitable Ruin and Destruction, I lost a great deal of Money, and when too late to recover it, I began seriously to reflect with myself, that let a Man be ever such a good Gamester at Cards or Dice, yet so many Sharpers were always flocking about him, that they would drain his Pockets in spite of all the greatest Favours of Fortune ”

“ The practice of betting is tolerably prevalent at present, and by no means confined to any particular class of the community. In fact, I am afraid it might be traced very far back in the [279] history of our Customs; but it will be sufficient, for the information of the reader, that I present him with an article from the London Chronicle of 1768, which, I think, will remind him of some recent transactions in the City.
“‘The introduction and amazing progress of illicit gaming at Lloyd’s Coffee House is, among others, a powerful and very melancholy proof of the degeneracy of the times. ”

“ There has always been much gambling in Paris, and up to the middle of the last century that city was the stronghold of public gaming, the Goddess of Chance wielding absolute sway in the Palais Royal, where licensed gaming-tables existed. ”

“ We were in a large hall, with lofty ceiling, and walls decorated in a style that might become an apartment in a royal palace. There were three tables, at two of which gaming was going on. At the third the gamblers sat around idle, waiting for customers, for "business" is rather slack just now, as the season has not begun. ”

“ Consequently, the longer the sitting, the greater the profits. The same lady who moralizes in the morning, and will read you a lecture on the mischievous consequences of gaming, makes not the smallest hesitation to press you to sit down at her bouillotte in the evening, where she knows you will almost infallibly be a loser. No protection, I believe, is now necessary for a lady who chooses to have a little private gaming at her residence, under the specious names of société, bal, thé, or concert. But this is not the case with the Maisons de jeu, where the gaming-tables are public ”

“ We first entered a small room, in which was a roulette-table surrounded by players, and well staked: this communicated by folding-doors with a spacious saloon with a double table for Trente-et-un, or Rouge et Noir, round which were seated the players, behind whom stood a few lookers-on, and still fewer young men, whose stakes were "few and far between,"—probably those of cautious adventurers, or novices pecking at the first-fruits of play. Nothing is better described in books than the folly of gaming, and the sufferings of its victims ”

“ What we are particularly considering in this section of the volume, Part II, is gaming as practiced in the halls, the club room and private houses in the United States. For those who, from poverty or other causes, are unable to gratify their taste for public gambling in rooms devoted to the purpose there is a multiplicity of devices, found upon fair grounds and at various other localities at which large crowds are wont to gather, which offer to the casual gamester an opportunity for gratifying his thirst for excitement at an expense sometimes trifling and sometimes costly. ”

“ Now-a-days, not content with carrying his purse to the gaming table, the gamester conveys his iron chest to the play-room. It is there that, as soon as the gaming instruments are distributed, you witness the most terrible contests. ”

“ These Maisons de jeu, where dupes are pitted against cheats, are filled from morning to night with those restless beings, who, in their eager pursuit after fortune, almost all meet with disappointment, wretchedness, ruin, and every mischief produced by gaming. This vice, however, carries with it its own punishment; but it is unconquerable in the heart which it ravages. It lays a man prostrate before those fantastic idols, distinguished by the synonymous names of fate, chance, and destiny. ”

“ He also tells us that so intense was the love of the Roman for games of hazard, that wherever he had excavated the pavement of a portico, of a basilica, of a bath, or any flat surface accessible to the public, he always found gaming tables engraved or scratched on the marble or stone slabs for the amusement of idle men, always ready to cheat each other out of their money. ”

“ There is the spirit of gaming in its essential characteristic—after all of your own money is gone, borrow from anybody and everybody, and have another hazard.
I went up to another prominent hall in the daytime, and found it filled with youths, but they did not seem such a respectable-looking lot as those I saw at night at the first place. They were a hoodlum lot, very noisy, and poor players. I was much surprised. It seemed astonishing that during the working hours there could be such a number of young men unemployed and yet playing a game which it requires funds to engage in. ”