The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1906-10-02
NERvY WOMEN GAMBLERS.
When Peeresses Ran Games and Fair
Sex Played Faro.

London Chronicle. s.
History will parallel most things
especially if the things are not what
they should be. 1t is one of the sound
est rules of life 70 withhold one IS con
fidence from the man who has discov-
cred a new evil. When the evil which
he believes to be unprecedented and
unheard of touches on society or on
any Of the innumberable forms Of
public taste and predictions, skepti-
clsm becomes almost q duty. Wha,
ever else you may forget please re-
member that during the excavations
Of Pompeii large numbers of 'cogged
dice were happened upon. There is
good deal of comfort, and most
salutary moral in that fact.
So that cannot in the least agree
with Father Vaughn when he tries to
make out that the gambling mania
which is sweeping over English society
is something peculiar to the year 1906,
either in fervor, pervasiveness, or re-
sultant harm. There may possible be
details in it that have not occurred be-
fore, and could not be parallelcd from
the history, let us say, Of the eigh-
teenth century-the great gambling
age of English annals. IF so, I am
not aware of them. 1t is constantly
said, for instance, that the extent to
which girls and young married women
gamble nowadays at bridges is entire
ly novel; but in the files of the Times
for 1897 you will find this illuminate
ing paragraph:
"At some of our first boarding
schools the fair pupils are now taught
whist and casino mot, one suspects,
for art s sake alone.
And I rather fancy that all the 9TH
er features of the brigde mania, which
are roundly denounced as npreced-
ented, might, if examined, be found
to be merely reproductions of bygone
follies. An impartial judgment would
probably 90 no further than to say
that gambling in English society has
now sealed height unreached since
the most rollicking days of the latter
eighteenth and the earlier nineteenth
century, that it is certainly more wide
spread today than ii has been for the
last 70 years, and that, while individ-
ual losses are less sensational than
they used to be, the proportion of
gamblers to population was never at
any time greater than at this moment.
In snail nonessentials there has of
course, been a certain change. A hun
dred years ago more than one peeress
kept gambling shops openly, and ad-
vertised them as such. Today it would
be more correct to say that. though
many titled woman's house is a
gambling shop in substance and prac-
tice, the fact is not advertised. Short
ly before Queen Victoria came to the
throne Crockford's on st. James
street, now the home of the Devon
shire Club, was the gambling center
Of the metropolis, and as much as
100000 sterling was known to change
hands in single evening. I do not
think that anything like that would be
possible now. Gibbon tells us how he
watched Fox lose $500 an hour for %
hours on end. That, too, one many
fairly class among the incidents Of an
age that has passed.
Tn one of his letters to Horace
Mann, Walpole makes tie astounding
statement that a loss of 100000 at a
single sitting was not rare enough to
be surprising. 1t would certainly
create some talk nowadays. One of
the Braddock sisters gamblcd away
her whole fortune of $4,000 in q
month. Ladies are luckier to-day in
getting some one to help them out of
such predicaments. There is a we'll
known tale of four men who sat down
to whist at Raggett's Club one Mon
day evening, about 1920, and did not
rise till II o'clock on the following
Wednesday morning, one Of them be-
ing the richer by 100000. T have not
heard Of such herculean feats being
performed today, and, indeed, one ha"
only to look at the betting book of
Brooks to realize that the age Of he
roic plungers is dead.
For the rest, England is simply liv-
ing over again the lift Of it's great
grandfathers-and it's great-grand-