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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz, Volume II

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The Turf, Historical, Social, Moral

But it is, or was, the associations, the inevitable concomitants,
of the turf and racing that stamp it, not only as something
questionable, but as a bane and infamy to the nation; and if
there is one spot more eminently distinguished for a general
rendezvous of fraud and gambling, that place is Newmarket.

The diversions of these plains have proved a decoy to many a
noble and ingenuous mind, caught in the snares laid to entrap
youth and inexperience. Newmarket was a wily labyrinth of loss
and gain, a fruitful field for the display of gambling abilities,
the school of the sharping crew, the academy of the Greeks, the
unfathomable gulf that absorbed princely fortunes.

The amusements of the turf were in all other places intermixed
with a variety of social diversions, which were calculated to
promote innocent mirth and gaiety. The breakfastings, the
concerts, the plays, the assemblies, attracted the circle of
female beauty, enlivened the scene, engaged the attention of
gentlemen, and thus prevented much of the evil contagion and
destruction of midnight play. But encouragement to the GAMBLER
of high and low degree was the very charter of Newmarket. Every
object that met the eye was encompassed with gambling--from the
aristocratic Rouge et Noir, Roulette, and Hazard, down to
Thimble-rig, Tossing, and Tommy Dodd. Every hour of the day and
night was beset with gambling diversified; in short, gambling
must occupy the whole man, or he was lost to the sport and spirit
of the place. The inhumanity of the cock-pit, the iniquitous
vortex of the Hazard table, employed each leisure moment from the
race, and either swallowed up the emoluments of the victorious
field, or sank the jockey still deeper in the gulf of ruin.

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