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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN GAMING IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER VI. page 19


On every race-course there was a public gambling booth and an
abundance of thimble-riggers' stalls. These, I am happy to
state, exist no longer; and the fools who are always ready to be
plucked, can only, in gambling, fall victims to the commonest and
coarsest of swindlers; skittle sharps, beer-house rogues and
sharpers, and knaves who travel to entrap the unwary in railway
carriages with loaded dice, marked cards, and little squares of
green baize for tables, and against whom the authorities of the
railway companies very properly warn their passengers. A
notorious gambling house in St James's Street--Crockford's,--
where it may be said, without exaggeration, that millions of
pounds sterling have been diced away by the fools of fashion, is
now one of the most sumptuous and best conducted dining
establishments in London--the "Wellington." The semipatrician
Hades that were to be found in the purlieus of St James's, such
as the "Cocoa Tree," the "Berkeley," and the "stick-shop,"
at the corner of Albemarle Street--a whole Pandemonium of
rosewood and plate-glass dens--never recovered from a razzia made
on them simultaneously one night by the police, who were
organized on a plan of military tactics, and under the command of
Inspector Beresford; and at a concerted signal assailed the
portals of the infamous places with sledge-hammers. At the time
to which I refer, in Paris, the Palais Royal, and the environs of
the Boulevards des Italiens, abounded with magnificent gambling
rooms similar to those still in existence in Hombourg, which were
regularly licensed by the police, and farmed under the
municipality of the Ville de Paris; a handsome per-centage of the
iniquitous profits being paid towards the charitable institutions
of the French metropolis.

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