34 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



staked on a single card at Faro, and ,70,000 changed hands in a single evening. 

 General Scott made a fortune at cards, and married one of his daughters to Canning 

 and the other to the Duke of Portland, father of Lord George Bentinck. Pitt himself 

 was a partner in a Faro- Bank at Goosetree's. Gilray's caricatures are full of terrible 

 satire on the fashionable vice against which even Lord Kenyon's fulminations 

 seemed powerless. " At some of our first boarding schools," says " The Times " for 

 November 2, 1797, "the fair pupils are now taught to play whist and casino. . . . 

 At a boarding school at Moorfields the mistress complains that she is unable to teach 

 her scholars either whist or pharo." Panton Street, near the Haymarket, records the 

 winnings of a gambler, who was as famous in the card-room as we have found him on 



the Turf. The organisa- 

 tion of a gambling- 

 house of the period is 

 easily reconstructed. 

 First came the Com- 

 missioner, who audited 

 the accounts with a 

 Director under him to 

 superintend the rooms, 

 and an Operator to deal 

 cards. Then there were 

 Croupiers who gathered 

 money for the bank; 

 An E.o. Table. Puffs to decoy the 



players ; a Clerk to check the Puffs ; a Flasher to swear the bank was broke ; a Dunner 

 to get losses out of needy gentlemen ; a Captain to fight any discontented player ; a 

 sharp Attorney to draw up any necessary deeds whenever wanted ; waiters for the 

 candles and refreshments ; ushers to conduct the company up and down ; runners who 

 got half-a-guinea every time they warned the porter that there were constables with- 

 out ; and a whole gang of unattached ruffians in the shape of linkboys, coachmen, chair- 

 men, drawers, common bail affidavit men, and bravoes of the lowest type. Hogarth 

 adds a characteristic touch in the highwayman, whose pistols peep out of his pocket, 

 waiting by the fireside till the heaviest winner goes, so that he may recoup his own 

 losses in the speediest fashion. 



Of the numberless queer wagers made that were based on a certain degree of 



