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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 9


At one of the watering-places, in 1803, a baronet lost L20,000
at play, and a bond for L7000. 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.

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