The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-04-03
WOMEN WHO GAMBLE.


Among the foreign dispatches printed
yesterday was one from London, to the
effect that poker parties are very pop
ular in aristocratic circles, particularly
with the ladies, including the Duchess
of Devonshire, Lady STAFFORD, Mrs.
Arthur Paget and Lady George Gordon
Lennox, all of whom are said to be eX-
cellent players
There is nothing startling in this bit
of information. 1t has been so for up
wards of a hundred years. There is no
reason for believing the passion for
gambling has abated among the first
ladies' of Europe since the days of Lady
Buckinghamshire in London, and of
Nine. de Montespan in Paris.
1t has been going on ever since with
more or less publicity and an occa-
sional scandal from crooked work, as
was charged in the celebrated baccarat
trial of the Prince of Wales.
While the practice was more open
and. perhaps, more general in France.
in England This is recorded of the
time of Elizabeth, and, although she
was no devotee Of the tickle goddess
herself, the ladies of her court were in
veterate faro fiends. And when the
Stuarts assembled the throne play. ran
high. Henrietta Maria, the wife of
Charles the First. inherited the gam
bling tastes of her father, the exceed
ingly rapid Henry ", and when Bas-
sompierre, also an arrant sport, was in
England on an embassy, in 1926, he and
the queen and Buckingham sat at a
window in Cheapside playing primero
for stakes while waiting for a process
sion to pass.
After the restoration of Charles II,
the royal favorites. the Duchess of Ma
zarin, the Duchess of Cleveland, the
Duchess of Portsmouth, Nell Gwynne
and their associates carried gambling
to lengths before unknown in England.
The Duchess of Mazarin, a niece of the
cardinal, lost more than a million louis
dor (S5,OOO GOOD. and ended her life in
baggary. Nell Gwynne lost $4,000
($25, OOO) to her rival, the Duchess of
Cleveland, at one sitting, and the i'm
nense fortune of the latter was subse-
quently lost at the basset table
Faro was played to such excess that
an attempt was made to suppress it by
judicial action. In 1896 Chief Justice
Kenyon delivered a charge in which
he dwelt on this scandal and threatened
to send even the first ladies of the land
to the pillory if they were convicted of
play at faro before him. And it is also
recorded that in 1872 Lady Bucking-
hamshire was convicted. along with
Lady Lutterell and Mrs. Sturt at the
police court, and fined $50 for playing
at faro. Henry Martindale was also
fined 5000 for keeping the faro table at
Lady Buekinghamshires 1t was also
shown that this woman was in the
habit of sleeping with "a blunderbuss
and a brace of pistols at her side to
protect her faro bank
But long before this women We're
known to have a prediction for gam
bling. In Greece they used to bet on
quail fighting and their favorites in
threw dice and played lotteries until
prohibitory laws We're enacted by en-
perors who We're themselves addicted
to the same practices.
Nor is this indulgence now confined
to the aristocratic circles of Europe.
In many Of the cities of the United
States there are poker clubs as swell
as any other social organizations pat
ronized by fashionable women, while
there are female bookmakers and pool
room keepers at most of the racing CEN
tiers patronized exclusively by women
This word from London cannot.
therefore, be classed as news, and it re-
fers to a practice too common to even
be sensational