Victorian Vice- The Turf

From the early 1700s to the early 1900s, horseracing reigned over English sport. Organized English horseracing (known as “the Turf”) took shape in the 1600s, and the sport grew in popularity and regulation. Seen as the “Sport of Kings”, the Gaming Act of 1739 tried to restrict participation in the sport to the aristocracy.  High entrance fees kept the riff-raff from competing, and enforcing prize purses of £50 or more should have killed smaller illegal tracks. In reality, the act proliferated illegal horse races. As Victorian England’s enthusiasm for horseracing grew, so too did their enthusiasm for betting on horse races. Faced with a national pastime, the Gaming Act of 1845 and the Betting Act of 1853 kept gambling at racetracks within the law.

Freed from the hypocritical facades of golden halls and the seedy backrooms of copper hells, gambling racketeers publicly ply their trade at Ascot, Epsom, and other racing towns. During a race day, a haphazard city of tents and booths surround every track in England. Enthusiasts arrive early to play Hazard, Roulette, Faro, and simple games of chance and return to play between races. Most of these temporary gambling dens stay open all day and all night. Although racetracks charge exorbitantly high rent on their grounds during racing season, purveyors of table games rake in a bundle in the carnival atmosphere of a race day. In fact, some smaller racetracks would close if they lost this revenue and the customers attracted by on track gambling. The bosses of the most notorious copper hells leave London for race weekends in the country. In their dishevel booths, they rob ten or twenty customers an hour with crooked games and return home weighted with disreputable riches.

Of course, the government did not legalize gambling at racetracks as a courtesy to table games and cardsharps, but for wagers over horseracing. At the track, bookmakers busily give odds for upcoming races and make hundreds of wagers at all hours of the day. Most won’t accept any bets under half a crown. Fake bookmakers stalk raceways stealing from inexperienced tourists. They take a bet, pocket the stakes, and disappear into the crowd.

While hordes of lower-class gamblers flock to bookmakers at racetracks, the rich prefer to make their bets in more refined and exclusive circumstances. The most famous betting parlor is Tattersalls in London.  Tattersalls is not a gentleman’s club, nor a gambling hall, but the premier racehorse auction house in England frequented by a select group of aristocratic gamblers intent on organized and respectable betting on the Turf. Its members belong to all levels of society. Race enthusiasts, horse breeders, jockeys, grooms, and gamblers all rub shoulders at Tattersalls. For a monthly subscription of £3 3s, persons accepted by the election committee receive access to club bookmakers, Tattersall’s drinking room (the “Turf Tap”), the ability to place bets months before a race starts, and the insider knowledge of fellow members.

Cheating in horseracing is as old as the Turf itself, and the number of moving parts involved in a large race leaves many gaps for deceitful knavery. Thugs harm, hobble, or dope horses to muck up their performance on the track. In more “informal” races, large dogs trained to attack certain horses pull favorites out of the running. Even in regulated racing, owners enter horses too young or too old for certain races with falsified papers. In one case a horse named Leander was suspected of being a year too old to compete, but it died before officials could examine its teeth for age. When officials exhumed the carcass they found someone had already dug Leander up and stolen its head. The Jockey Club barred Leander’s owners from future races.

Victorian Vice-Hazard

Every night, countless thousands of pounds switch owners at gambling halls and gentlemen’s clubs over games of Hazard. In the 1700s and early 1800s, the perilous game’s name turned into a synonym for dangerous obstacles. An appropriate appropriation, considering the many well-heeled sons of well-bred families left impoverished after a night’s play. Bored crusaders may have invented the game while besieging the Arabian castle “Asart”, or it may have been named after the Spanish word for an unlucky roll of the dice, “Azar”. Hazard was the staple game for displays of status and wealth at Crockford’s fashionable gambling house. It remains popular in golden halls catering to fun seekers of independent means.

Hazard may only require two six-sided dice to play, but that doesn’t mean it’s a simple game. Its finicky rules require memorization, an understanding of odds, and a personal fortune large enough to absorb sudden losses. Any number of players may gather around a Hazard table. One player at a time takes turns as the caster. The caster names a number between 5 and 9 (known as the main). If the dice roll the main, the caster wins a payout equaling his wager. If the dice roll a 2 or 3, the castor loses. An 11 or 12 on the dice means the caster either won or lost depending on their main number.

                -5 or 9 loses on an 11 or 12

                -6 or 8 loses on an 11 but wins on a 12

                -7 wins on an 11 but loses on a 12

Any other number rolled by the dice is called the chance. The caster rolls again. If the caster rolls their chance number a second time, they win back their stake plus a little more derived from a complicated set of odds based on their main and chance numbers. If they roll the main (their original number) the caster loses their stake. If the dice roll any other number the caster keeps rolling until they roll the main or the chance.

Casters play rounds of Hazard until three loses or they quit. Then the next player takes over as caster. If played outside a gambling hall, the other players act as the bank covering the caster’s winnings and sharing their losses among the group. Impatient for their turn as caster, players often make private side bets over the next number rolled, whether it will be even or odd, and the size of the next caster’s wager.

No matter the main or chance, the quick changing and complex odds of Hazard never favor the caster. Despite the handicap, cheating at hazard is rare. In games among the nobility, most of the caster’s know each other. Any hint of a scandal pulls the accused out of society. All castors share the same two dice and any alteration to make the dice roll a certain way would equally improve the odds for everyone provided they were not serendipitously swapped back out.

Hazard in Play

To play an entire game of Hazard in one roll, the caster makes a Gambling test with 6 black dice. On a success, the caster wins an amount equal to double their wager. For each net success, the castor wins another amount equal to their wager. On a partial success, the caster may roll again. On a failure, the castor loses their wager and must give up the dice to the next castor.

For a side bet, the player rolls an opposed Gambling test against their opponents with no black dice. This may be done while the player is the caster or just waiting their turn. To cheat at Hazard, the cheater rolls a Sleight of Hand test with 6 black dice to affect the caster’s outcome.

Victorian Vice- Faro

Whether it’s their main table or tucked in a corner, every Victorian gambling hall has a Faro (pronounced as the word “Pharaoh) table. The homonymic name stems from the game’s origin in the French court of Louis the XVI. Their standard deck featured cards depicting an Egyptian pharaoh. Faro spread to every saloon, gaming club across Europe and America in the 1800s. Punters (as Faro players are called) of all social classes crowd around the gaming table because of its simple rules and easily understood odds. Faro tables are generally square with a spot for the dealer cut out. The center of the table holds depictions of the thirteen types of cards in a suite (ace, two, three, etc all the way to king, excluding jokers). They might be painted on felt or the entire suite of spades glued to a wooden board.

At the start of a turn, punters place their stakes on their chosen cards. The dealer then draws the top card of a standard fifty-two card deck and places it on his right. This is the winning card. He then draws the losing card and places it on his left. Any punter lucky enough to bet on the winning card receives a payout equal to his stake (in other words a shilling bet wins a shilling). Those placing their faith on the losing card lose their stake. Gamblers whose cards neither won nor lost neither won nor lost their money. After payouts switched hands, new players joined the game, old players left, and stakes shifted from one card to another before the next round begins.

For further complication, punters may flip the game on its head by placing a marker next to their wager indicating that they are betting on that card to lose. If it wins, they lose their stake. If it loses, they win. Punters may also spread their stakes across multiple cards. A game of faro ends with one last bet over the order of the final three cards in the deck (ignoring the absolute last card which was revealed previously at the beginning of the game). If a punter guesses the order of all three cards he wins four-to-one. Guessing two of the three pays out two-to-one, and guessing one pays out one-to-one.

Among table games, Faro has the best odds unless the dealer cheats. To discourage cheating or to appear more honest despite cheating, faro begins by the dealer shuffling the deck, a punter cutting the cards, and the dealer revealing the card at the bottom of the deck. The deck was also kept in a special spring-fed box allowing the top cards to be pulled out one by one with little chance of manipulation. A small device similar to an abacus called “the case-keeper” recorded what cards had already been revealed from the deck and which cards remained. Despite these safeguards, few dealers played an honest table. Some dealers cheated with special decks designed to keep pairs of cards stuck together during a thorough shuffle. The box holding the cards could be altered allowing the dealer to pull certain cards at their whim. At a noisy and crowded table, a fellow conspirator could easily slide a wager from a winning card to a loser. In spite of widespread cheating, Faro’s quick and easy play, the comradery of punters eagerly tracking the deck’s progress, and the sudden wins and losses made it the most popular table game in Victorian England.

Faro in Play

To simulate an entire game of faro with a single test, the punter makes a Gambling test with 3 black dice. On a successful roll, they win an amount equal to their wager. For every net success, the punter wins another amount equal to their original wager. They break even with a partial success and lose their wager on a failure.

If the table is crooked, the punter’s roll remains the same, but the dealer makes a Gambling, or Mental competence test opposing the gambler.

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.