whose vices contaminated the very atmosphere.
Before the advent of these worthies the number of gambling houses in the metropolis, exclusive of those so long established by subscription, was not more than half-a-dozen; but by the year 1820 they had increased to nearly fifty. Besides Faro and Hazard, the foreign games of Macao, Roulette, Rouge et Noir, &c., were introduced, and there was a graduated accommodation for all ranks, from the Peer of the Realm to the Highwayman, the Burglar, and the Pick et.
At one of the watering-places, in 1803, a baronet lost £20,000 at play, and a bond for £7000. This will scarcely surprise us when we consider that at the time above five hundred notorious characters supported themselves in the metropolis by this species of robbery, and in the summer spread themselves through the watering-places for their professional operations. Some of them kept bankers, and were possessed of considerable property in the funds and in land, and went their circuits as regularly as the judges. Most excellent judges they were, too, of the condition of a 'pigeon.'
In a great commercial city where, from the extent of its trade, manufacture, and revenue, there must be an immense circulation of property, the danger is not to be conceived of the allurements which were thus held out to young men in business having the command of money, as well as the clerks of merchants, bankers, and others. In fact, too many of this class proved, at the bar of justice, the consequence of their resort to these complicated scenes of vice, idleness, extravagance, misfortune, and crime. Among innumerable instances are the following:—In 1796, a shopman to a grocer in the city was seduced into a gaming party, where he first lost all his own money, and ultimately what his master had intrusted him with. He hanged himself in his bed-room a few hours afterwards.
In the same year, Lord Kenyon in summing up a case of the kind said:—'It was extremely to be lamented that the vice of gambling had descended to the very lowest orders of the people. It was prevalent among the highest ranks of society, who had set the example to their inferiors, and who, it seemed, were too great for the law. I wish they could be punished. If any prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and the parties are justly convicted, whatever may be their rank or station in the country—though they should be the first ladies in the land—they shall certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory.'
In 1820, James Lloyd, one of the harpies who practised on the credulity of the lower orders by keeping a Little Go, or illegal lottery, was brought up for the twentieth time, to answer for that offence. This man was a methodist preacher, and assembled his neighbours together at his dwelling on a Saturday to preach the gospel to them, and the remainder of the week he was to be found, with an equally numerous party, instructing them in the ruinous vice of gambling. The charge was clearly proved, and the prisoner was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour.
In the same year numbers of young persons robbed their masters to play at a certain establishment called Morley's Gambling House, in the City, and were ruined there. Some were brought to justice at the Old Bailey; others, in the madness caused by their losses, destroyed themselves; and some escaped to other countries, by their own activity, or through the influence of their friends.
A traveller of the coachmakers, Messrs Houlditch of Long Acre, embezzled or applied to his own use considerable sums of money belonging to them. It appeared in evidence that the prisoner was sent by his employers to the Continent to take orders for carriages; he was allowed a handsome salary, and was furnished with carriages for sale. The money he received for them he was to send to his employers, after deducting his expenses; but instead of so doing, he gambled nearly the whole of it away. The following letter to his master was put in by way of explanation of his career:—'Sir—The errors into which I have fallen have made me so hate myself that I have adopted the horrible resolution of destroying myself. I am sensible of the crime I commit against God, my family, and society, but have not courage to live dishonoured. The generous confidence you placed in me I have basely violated; I have robbed you, and though not to enrich myself, the consciousness of it destroys me. Bankruptcy, poverty, beggary, and want I could bear—conscious integrity would support me: but the ill-fated acquaintance I formed led me to those earthly hells—gambling houses; and then commenced my villainies and deceptions to you. My losses were not large at first; and the stories that were told me of gain made me hope they would soon be recovered. At this period I received the order to go to Vienna, and on settling at the hotel I found my debts treble what I had expected. I was in consequence compelled to leave the two carriages as a guarantee for part of the debt, which I had not in my power to discharge. I had hoped such success at Vienna as would enable me to state all to you; but disappointment blasted every hope, and despair, on my return to Paris, began to generate the fatal resolution which, at the moment you read this, will have matured itself to consummation. I feel that my reputation is blasted; no way left of re-imbursing the money wasted, your confidence in me totally destroyed, and nothing left to me but to see my wife and children, and die. Affection for them holds me in existence a little longer. The gaming table again presented itself to my imagination as the only possible means of extricating myself. Count Montoni's 3000 francs, which I received before you came to Paris, furnished me with the means—my death speaks the result! After robbery so base as mine, I fear it will be of no use for me to solicit your kindness for my wretched wife and forlorn family. Oh, Sir, if you have pity on them and treat them kindly, and do not leave them to perish in a foreign land, the consciousness of the act will cheer you in your last moments, and God will reward you and yours for it tenfold. Their sensibilities will not cause them to need human aid. Thus I shall be threefold the murderer. I thank you for the kindness you have rendered me; and I assure your brother that he has, in this dreadful moment, my ardent wishes for his welfare here and hereafter. I have so contrived it that you will see a person at the Prince's tomorrow, who will interpret for you. In mentioning my fate to him, you will not much serve your own interest by blackening my character and memory. I subjoin the reward of my villainies and the correct balance of the account. Count Edmond's regular bills I have not received; his valet will give you them; the others are in a pocket-book, which will be found on my corpse somewhere in the wood of Boulogne.
'Signed, W. KINSBY.'
It appears, however, that the gentleman changed his mind and did not commit suicide, but surrendered at the Insolvent Debtor's Court to be dealt with according to law, which was a much wiser resolution.
To the games of Faro, Hazard, Macao, Doodle-do, and Rouge et Noir, more even than to horse-racing, many tradesmen, once possessing good fortunes and great business, owed their destruction. Thousands upon thousands have been ruined in the vicinity of St. James's. It was not confined to youths of fortune only, but the decent and respectable tradesman, as well as the dashing clerk of the merchant and banker, was ingulfed in its vortes.
The proprietors of gaming houses were also concerned in fraudulent insurances, and employed a number of clerks while the lotteries were drawing, who conducted the business without risk, in counting-houses, where no insurances were taken, but to which books were carried, as well as from the different offices in every part of the town, as from the Morocco-men, who went from door to door taking insurances and enticing the poor and middling ranks to adventure.
It was gambling, and not the burdens of the long war, nor the revulsion from war to peace, that made so many bankruptcies in the few years succeeding the Battle of Waterloo. It was the plunderers at gaming tables that filled the gazettes and made the gaols overflow with so many victims.
A foreigner has advanced an opinion as to the source of the gambling propensity of Englishmen. 'The English,' says M. Dunne,(68) 'the most speculative nation on earth, calculate even upon future contingences. Nowhere else is the adventurous rage for stock-jobbing carried on to so great an extent. The fury of gambling, so common in England, is undoubtedly a daughter of this speculative genius. The Greeks of Great Britain are, however, much inferior to those of France in cunning and industry. A certain Frenchman who assumed in London the title and manners of a baron, has been known to surpass all the most dexterous rogues of the three kingdoms in the art of robbing. His aide-de-camp
