Victorian Vice- Touts and Tipsters

If a wager contains no risk it’s no longer gambling. The search for a “sure thing” in Horseracing grew into an industry in Victorian England. Horse grooms, self-professed experts, mathematicians, fortunetellers, breeders, and charlatans all lined their pockets informing gamblers which horses to back for a price. Attentive customers eager for the name of a winner surround touts and tipsters at every racetrack and betting parlor in England. Enterprising touts purchase space in racing periodicals to advertise their tip mailing lists. Gamblers generally pay between 6 pence to 1 shilling for a tip, although prices rise for the biggest races (such as the Derby). An annual subscription by mail cost about 2 shillings, however, scam artists run most tip-by-mail operations.

Unfortunately, very few racing tipsters and touts have any better idea of what horse will win than their customers. If their information turns out to be useful through sheer luck, their customers return. If the horse loses, the customer already paid and touts never give refunds for faulty insights. They rely on patter, jargon, accomplices pretending to be satisfied customers, and plausible-sounding sources of inside information. Muddying the water further even touts with genuine information rely on these theatrics to bring in the customers.

Most tipsters lure in customers with promises of being “in the swim”, armed with genuine inside information.

These touts seem like regular working men and women with sharp ears and eyes, often claiming a connection to racing. The source of their information may be a friend working as a groom in the racing stable, an overheard conversation in a barbershop between members of a criminal syndicate, or a few hours spent perched in a tree outside the track. Their little known horses boast incredible practice lap times far outpacing the favorite. These “certainties” come with much longer odds and much higher potential payouts.

Some educated tipsters claim to possess an infallible system for predicting winning horses. Whether by advanced math, numerology, keen knowledge of horse anatomy, or just letting their 5-year-old child pick a horse, their customers follow the method all the way to the bookmaker. Tipsters alleging secret methods often act worldly-wise, honest, generous, mathematically gifted, or grandfatherly. Some might even assert their system earns thousands of pounds over the course of a racing season. The tipster merely charges a token fee to keep out the riffraff.

A few tipsters even profess to possess occult powers. They use their incredible gifts to pluck the names of winning horses out of the air. Such “Turf Prophets” appeal to superstitious gamblers with chants, nonsensical rituals, and esoteric auguries. They dress in exotic costumes or ritual robes. Many are foreign or try to appear foreign. Fortunetelling tricks, cold reading, and the occasional correct prediction keep the fakes employed, while genuine seers must be desperate for money to degrade their magical abilities.

Finally, the most genuine of tipsters are the lower-class men and women loitering around the track selling race cards. Once purchased, race cards furnish their owners with the horse’s names, weights, and coloration, along with key facts about their riders and saddlery. These key statistics arm their customers to make educated guesses for their wagers. Many card sellers leave their jobs as newspaper peddlers in the streets of London for a racing weekend. At 6 pence a card, they can easily make up to 10 shillings a weekend. Some card sellers earn extra money by working as a bookmaker. Others offer other more illicit products for sale.

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.

Victorian Vice- Building a Copper Hell

Much of the information about gambling halls comes from the vibrant and theatrical recollections of antigambling reformers investigating social ills from the inside. These detailed reports flow with colorful descriptions essential to replicating the myriad of copper hells in London. Here is a list of specific assets and attributes taken from their descriptions of distinct copper hells. If you want a copper hell in an adventure pick one or two details from each section:

Interior

- Splashes of drinks and tobacco juice stain the walls.

-A back corridor leads to many small rooms dedicated to private games, betting consultations, and dalliances.

-Twenty to thirty people surround the baccarat-table watching and waiting to play. Those at the table and near the walls sit on rough wooden benches.

-In the gambling room sits a long table draped in green cloth. Carefully regulated lines of white string clearly mark the betting spaces for the game of hazard. During a police raid, the dealer pulls out a pair of scissors, cuts the strings, and swallows the dice. All that is left is a simple table clothed in green.

- In a side room, a complimentary buffet of simple room-temperature foods, such as meat joints, chicken, and salad or glasses of sherry and riesling quickly sate peckish patrons and bring them back to the tables.

- Signs litter the walls of the gambling hall, reminding guests of rules, decorum, and the advantages of continued membership.

- Gamblers stand around the gaming tables due to a complete lack of chairs and furniture.

- Black paint covers the windows of the ground floor.

Organization and Rules

-The hall closes at 12 AM. This encourages frantic wagering as closing time nears and gives an air of respectability lacking in houses open all night.

-Dealers and card sharps avoid frightening new members away with losses. Cheating is saved for regular customers and high stakes.

- No women in the gambling house, except the barmaid.

- The hall is open only after dark.

-The minimum bet at any table game is one half-crown (2 shillings and sixpence).

-The gaming house’s bank is a large pile of coins on the roulette table.

-The bar serves its patrons strong drinks for free. The proprietor encourages drinking to fill his hall with reckless wagers.

-The hall remains open all night making it very popular with the after-theater crowd.

Location

-A dripping, dimly lit basement under a pub

- The upper stories of a disused workhouse

- Up three flights of stairs in a tall building

-Hidden in a club for members of a specific nationality

-Above a greengrocers

-In the back of a laundry

-In a coffee shop

- Behind a newspaper and periodical shop with a small reading room.

People

-Young men swarm around a few ballet-girls and music hall actresses waiting for dancing to start.

-The owner evaluates new members with jocular conversation.

- Two cardsharps conspire to fleece their target.

- A cadre of men discusses odds around a bookie noting horseracing wagers in his betting book.

-On nights when the house raked in a great deal of money, the owner distributes free drinks to console losers.

- A patron screams in indignant rage that he’s been cheated by the gambling house. The bullies employed by the house beat him in front of the other guests to discourage similar outbursts.

- After a losing streak, gamblers try to sell their pocket watches, rings, and waistcoats to fund their next wager.

- The burly doorman also acts as a waiter.

Victorian Vice- Copper Hells

Social class divides gambling houses into two categories: Copper Hells, and Golden Halls. Golden halls refer to respectable gentlemen’s clubs beyond the reach of the law, while the working classes gather in copper hells, illegal gambling dens hidden in clandestine locations. Their premises hide behind veneers of respectability or sit in the worst parts of London free of honest constables.

The proprietors of illegal gambling houses take precautions against letting snitches, reporters, crusaders, and police past their doors. No signs advertise their games and entertainments save a gas lamp or lantern hung over their entrance. Its light declares ongoing gaming in the house and shines on the faces of guests wishing to come in. The doorman looks over visitors through an eye slit and admits recognized patrons or those uttering that night‘s passphrase. Most hells force first-time visitors to pay a membership fee of about 3 shillings, although it may be inflated to as much as 10 shillings to line to doorman’s pocket. Others wait for the guest to gamble before taking their money and require only for a trusted member to vouch for the first-timer.

Once inside, the entertainments, games, and refreshments vary from Copper Hell to Copper Hell according to their membership’s taste and income.  Some attract young professionals with dancing and live music, while laborers and criminal’s crowd around cockfights in the back of a pub across town. Middle-class patrons of quiet gambling halls view their gatherings almost as a gentlemen’s club. In addition to illegal gambling, they escape the world with a drink, conversation, and a newspaper in a comfortable room.

The stakes wagered in the games may be as low as five pence in a dingy hell frequented by the most desperate of society’s dregs, or as high as £5 in halls populated with respectable professionals. Most money changes owners over table-games such as baccarat, roulette, hazard, and faro. Proprietors often set aside a room for billiards and other games of dexterity and coordination. The seedier and more disreputable hells host blood sports such as duck baiting, dogfights, rat baiting, and boxing. Every night, Bookies and bet-makers hold court in a private corner. To keep the operation under control, large violent men called “Bullys” evict obvious cheaters, rowdy drunks, and sore losers. Gambling halls also employ “Bonnets” hired gamblers who cajole others into playing, give the club more life by playing games on slow nights, or gamble on behalf of the house against lucky players for a percentage. Young members of the upper class fallen into debt or scandal often make their living as Bonnets.

Gambling is rarely the only illegal activity practiced in a copper hell. The ubiquitous bar serves unlicensed liquor to their patrons and prostitutes flock to gambling houses open to both sexes. Pickpockets comfortably spend evenings waiting for the proprietor’s permission to steal from gamblers wise enough to stop when they are ahead. Desperate gamblers recover their losses by buying and selling of stolen valuables. Above all, card sharps cheat in a plethora of blaggardly ways as does the gambling house. In the worst copper hells, players cycle through a gaming table through the night and not one a winner.

Victorian Vice- The Gambling Laws

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.

The City of Countless Names- Justice and the Zabtiye

Alongside all the reforms of the law, came reforms for those enforcing the law. The destruction of the Janissaries (the elite military class) in 1826 left massive gaps in the internal security of the Ottoman Empire. Members of the Ottoman Imperial Army, under the control of the Serasker, took over their duties and started Constantinople’s first police force.

In 1845, the sultan issued the Polis Nizamnamesi (police regulation) organizing these men into their own modern police bureau: the Zabtiye. One year later, he established the Zabtiye Kaymakamlingi, an office with the purpose of unifying the police force under their authority, driving out corruption, and standardizing policing methods. The Zabtiye still fall under the authority of the Serasker. All are Turkish, all are Nithamiyeen. A Zabtiye officer is quickly recognizable by his waist-length gray coat with red piping, matching gray trousers, scarlet fez, and the silver star and crescent moon badge pinned to their chest.

Although the Sultan’s reorganization of the Zabtiye was heavily influenced by the Parisian police, they fall short of this cosmopolitan ideal. His men lack experience, knowledge, and tact.  Zabtiye officers patrol the city streets, surveying public places, markets, and religious sites as a deterrent for crime. They are badly equipped to solve those crimes already occurred, and the criminals of Constantinople know it. With the new opportunities brought by the war and the wave of Europeans in Constantinople, crime grows everywhere in the crowded city streets. Rumors spread of pashas bribing Zabtiye officers close to unmasking their crimes, and of robberies committed by men dressed as English soldiers.

Dissatisfied by the Zabtiye’s efforts to staunch the flow of crime, European consuls took drastic measures to protect their citizens. Residents in the European quarters of Pera and Galata, fear for their lives after a recent spree of nightly murders and robberies. Because French officers were among the victims, the French army stationed some of its soldiers to patrol the streets of Pera, without asking permission from the Ottoman government. The Sultan has not responded to their diplomatic blunder, but certain pashas are furious.

At night, very few oil lamps light the abandoned streets and winding alleyways of Constantinople, providing intriguing opportunities for thieves, muggers, and other nighttime predators. To supplement to police efforts after dark, a force of night watchmen patrol the streets armed with an iron shod staff. As the watchman walks the clink of the staff on stone declares his watchful presence. City law forbids anyone going out after dark without a lit lantern or candle. Night watchmen regularly arrest anyone lacking illumination on suspicion of criminal intent.  

Due to the diversity of the Constantinople, Kadis handle the sentencing for Turkish criminals, consuls take care of foreign nationals, and local religious leaders, such as the Patriarch of the Greek Aluminte church, judge the members of their ethnic communities. Although a judge could sentence a thief’s hand cut off, or an unfaithful wife stoned, these punishments are mostly used as a deterrent rather than a regular course of justice. Fines and floggings are the most common sentences, followed by forced labor and banishment from the city. The courts save mutilation (usually a hand or foot) and death for traitors, the most violent crimes, or incorrigible repeat offenders.

If punished with a fine, the amount varies by the offense of the crime, and the criminal’s wealth. The most common form of corporal punishment is the bastinado, the flogging of the bottom of the foot. The bastinado is painful, humiliating, and temporarily crippling. Any character punished by the bastinado suffers a 3 black dice penalty to all Dexterity skill tests.  Criminals sentenced to forced labor perform any service needed by the government for the duration of their sentence, such as logging, construction, or service in the Ottoman navy. Although, execution methods in the Ottoman Empire can still be medieval (such as beheading or impaling) hanging is the most common method.

Hasan Bin Sunduk (Leopardfolk Zabtiye Patrolman)

Physical: 7           Initiative: 5

Mental: 3             Health: 8

Social:  4               Quintessence: 6

Damage: Punch (3), Club (6)

Possible Special Traits:

Keep the Sultan’s subjects safe +3, Suspicious of foreigners +2, A credit to the Zabtiye +2,

Despite his average height, Hasan stands tall with authority in his uniform, polished badge gleaming, ready to perform his duty in the Sultan’s name. His spotted fur bristles and his jaws contort due to a recent tooth ache.

Silah bin Musa (Human Kadi)

Physical: 4           Initiative: 6

Mental: 8             Health: 8

Social: 8                Quintessence: 18

Damage: Punch (3)

Possible Special Traits:

Desperately hides his past dishonesties +2, Scholar of the Law +3, Dignified and official demeanor +3,

Silah disdains the European fashions, preferring intricate kaftans (a long colored robe) and the traditional turban. His stern wrinkled face, behind his gray beard, always frowns as though he ponders a difficult problem.

More Victorian Criminals- Swindlers

Continuing our look at criminals described by Henry Mayhew, here is another lawbreaker useful for adventures in Victoriana. 

“Swindlers”, defrauding those of whom they buy

While most thieves in Victorian London use dexterity and secrecy to steal, swindlers get their loot in the daylight with the help of their victims. Swindlers make promises of future payment for goods or services with the intention of never making payment. When their creditors try to collect their money, they discover the swindler has moved away.

The size of a swindle can range from single person leaving town without paying their rent, to an entire team of conmen ordering thousands of pounds worth of valuables from all over the city before closing shop and moving on. The more valuable the payoff the more respectable the swindlers have to appear to pull off the job. A woman with decent clothes can fool a few shopkeepers into delivering furniture bought with credit, but an office with business cards, courteous employees, and a recordof good business practice could snatch a big enough score to retire.

Often after their goods are delivered, swindlers send letters to their creditors with excuses of bank errors, family emergencies, or additional instructions of how to get their money. This tactic can delay their discovery for a few weeks, buying time to wrap up their shady deals and departure plans. When their creditors start to get suspicious they find nothing but empty offices, unfurnished houses, and nonexistent law firms.

Swindlers found guilty of obtaining goods by fraud could be given anything from a light sentence (a few months in prison and a shilling fine) or a harsher sentence (a couple years hard labor), depending on how much they tried to steal.

Colin Wooder (Gnome clerk with a criminal record)

Initiative: 4

Physical: 4

Mental: 6

Social: 7

Health: 6

Traits: Good with numbers+2, (Seemingly) mild mannered employee+3

Combat: Surrender and wait for a good opportunity to run

Bespectacled and meek, Colin appears a very unlikely suspect. His professional manner and acumen for business lead many shopkeepers to assume he is a simple assistant not a swindling master mind. The calluses on his hands suggest months of hard labor in the recent past.

Honeymooners

Newly married couples need all sorts of furniture, clothes, and house goods to set up a new home, which is why it makes such a perfect cover for swindlers. A giddy young bride calling on a furniture dealer will be met with well wishes, and a newly rented house empty of any furnishings raises no eyebrows.

Any items needed to make a home, such as drapery, fine clothes, jewelry, kitchenware, décor, linens, furniture, books, and livery can be easily fenced.

Long Firms

Swindlers looking for high investment and high payoff use a long firm. Long firms are temporary businesses set up to give swindlers a good credit history. The long firm exists for a few months, or even years, ordering goods and paying for them before the criminal activity starts. Anyone looking closely sees nothing but a new company with growing needs.  

When they collect enough business contacts and they can quickly store or ship their wares, the swindlers order massive amounts of valuable merchandise. They pack up and leave, ready to sell their wares (sometimes legitimately) in another town.

Many long firms pretend to be manufacturing brokers or importers/exporters as cover for their purchases.

Adventure ideas

A swindler got away with all the stock in a contact’s store. The contact will go bankrupt unless his merchandise is recovered before the crooks fence it.

A long firm wrapped up shop and skipped town, leaving a trail of creditors. A great deal of specialized digging equipment is among the items stolen. Are they for resale or are they part of the next step in a sister plan?

This next week I will be serving as an official in the Wesleyan Bible Bowl National Championship. Between the competition and travel time, I won't have time for a post next week. If you miss me next Friday, look at an older post from the blog and pretend it's new.