Victorian Vice- Golden Halls

Among the idle rich, gambling blossomed as a fashionable vice fed by leisure time, expendable income, and unlimited credit. Only a scoundrel stains their honor by failing to settle a debt. The high stakes of “deep play” and the opulence of certain gaming houses restricted to the nobility added a thrilling glamour too strong for young Englishmen and women of means to resist. While the masses play for low stakes in copper hells, England’s elite wager in golden halls.

Gambling scandals among the well-bred reached their apex in the late 1700s. Sons lost entire inheritances and fled to France to escape their debtors. Government ministers indulged their vice instead of serving the empire. Scores of high-born ladies flocked to Almack’s card tables to chat over cards. Suspicions of cheating drove certain members of the peerage into hiding. These public displays of shocking behavior blackened the reputations of posh gaming houses catering to the upper class.  Crockford’s, the most famous and opulent gambling house in England, closed in 1845. While England’s aristocracy still gathers for wagers and games of chance, they now gamble behind closed doors.

Genteel ladies escape to “tea parties” hosted in respectable households for a night’s gaming. These parties revolve around card games with the relatively low stakes of £1. The responsibility of hosting shifts among their members to protect the ladies’ secret vice, often without the knowledge of their host’s husband.

Not every country in Europe regulated gambling so tightly as England. Possessing the time, freedom and money needed for travel abroad, the upper classes visited Homburg, Baden, Wiesbaden, and other gaming towns of the German Confederation for gambling holidays. Although France also outlawed gambling houses, the glamorous southern coast attracted tourists looking to risk their money at table games.

The most hallowed sanctuary of a proper gentleman is the inside of his club. Several gentlemen’s clubs started as gambling houses and most retain these facilities. Important and influential members of the government retreat to these golden halls for peaceful relaxation and society with their equals. Antigambling laws do not reach the club’s confines and the activities inside.

The two gentlemen’s clubs most famous and infamous for gambling are White’s and Brooks’s. Whites began as a coffee house in 1693 and became a gambling hall in the early 1700s. Its members, known as the “Gamesters’ of White’s”, wagered fantastically large sums of money on practically anything, such as which raindrop will run down a windowpane first, how many cats would cross the street, and how long a man could survive underwater. While White’s reputation calmed with age and its membership boasts respectable cornerstones of the empire, its members still eagerly meet to gamble. The majority of White’s 650 members belong to the Tory political party.

Although only begun in 1764, Brooks’s reputation is just as checkered as Whites. The club began as a gambling hall for leaders of the Whig political party in a pub known as Almacks. As the wagering at White’s declined, the wagering at Almacks ascended. The club moved to its present home and present name in 1778, a great yellow-brick building paid for by William Brooks. The new clubhouse was designed for gambling with all night gaming rooms and notoriously high stakes. The club rules restrict Brooks’s membership to 575 members.

Both clubs keep a betting book recording the wagers made among their members, both for posterity and for accountability. Famous names, small fortunes, and bets over sports, politics, and romance fill its pages.