Gambling requires little more
than stakes, an agreed wager, and an event or contest over which to wager the
stakes. This simplicity and the growing percentage of the population with
disposable incomes spread gambling as a pastime and a business through English society in the 1800s. Men and women of the working class tossed
away their week’s pay on games of chance and dice throws, as gentlemen and
ladies lost thousands of pounds a night sitting at a gaming club. From copper
hells to golden halls, we’re looking at gambling in Victorian England.
Since Englishmen first gathered
to wager, English law sought to discourage it, or at least discourage it among
the poor. King Henry VIII decreed only members of his court were allowed to
gamble and play games. Everyone else could only play games of chance on Christmas
day. Another well-intentioned act in 1739 banned betting over games such as
hearts, hazard, and faro in clubs. Parliament later amended the act to include
dice games and roulette as well. Faced with this iron-clad law,
gentlemen’s clubs simply claimed any games on their premises were private
affairs unassociated with club policy or rules. They
couldn’t be held accountable for wagers among their members. Despite these
attempts, gambling (or as it’s more respectably known “gaming”) reached it’s
most ubiquitous and notorious heights in the late 1700s and early 1800s. By the 1850s, middle-class concern over the notorious gambling scandals of high
born young men and moral outrage over the corruption of the lower classes
brought new legislation designed to curb gambling’s iron hold.
The Gaming Act of 1845 legalized
games of skill (such as tennis and bowling), made cheating a crime punishable
by two years in prison, enabled police constables to more easily obtain
warrants for searching suspected gambling houses, and most importantly prohibited wagers from
being enforced by law. Disgruntled gamblers with influence and means no longer
took up time in court to argue the minutia of their bets. While this rapidly
cleared many drawn-out cases, it clearly had more ramifications for the poor
than the closely knit upper-class. If a bookmaker
decided not to pay out to a lucky client, there was nothing legally the client
could do about it.
Her Majesties’ government took
further steps against gambling’s corruptive influence among the working class
with the Betting Act of 1853. The act outlaws the keeping or use of “any house,
office, room, or other place, for the purpose of the owner or occupier betting
with persons resorting thereto, or receiving money in advance in respect of
bets”. Those managing the gambling house or those caught gambling inside faced
a fine of up to £500 or up to a year in jail. The act also set fines for those
delaying or obstructing the police from entering a suspected gambling club or
giving a fake name and address to the police while caught in a raid. Once again
the law left the gaming in gentlemen’s clubs legal. Betting at the racetrack,
which was popular with the upper and middle classes, remained legal as well.
Faced with these new laws, many
bookies left England to set up shop in Scotland or continental Europe and their
clientele continued betting by mail, a method of gambling not criminalized by
the acts. Some moved outdoors and did all their business in the street
employing messengers for payments, payouts, and bets. Others continued to break
the law moving their gambling house from premises to premises ahead of the
police.
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