GAMING. 



423 



Cheatiag in a 

 game or at 

 play. 



fraud charged in the bill. And his Lordship said, that he 

 thought the sum very exorbitant for a man to lose at play 

 in one night, and that if it was in his power he would pre- 

 vent it ; and cited the case of Sir Cecil Binhop v. 8ir John 

 Staples in the time of Lord Chief Justice Hale, about a 

 wager upon a foot race, and that the Chief Justice said, 

 in that case, that those great wagers proceeded from avarice 

 and were founded in corruption, and decided that he would 

 give the defendant leave to imparl from time to time. His 

 Lordship then said, that if such discouragement was given 

 to gaming at common law, it ought much more to be done 

 in a Court of Equity. 



Cheating in a game or at play is now an indictable 

 offence ; for by the 17th section of 8 & 9 Vict. c. 109, it 

 is enacted, " that every person who shall by any fraud or 

 unlawful device or ill practice in playing at or with cards, 

 dice, tables, or other games, or in bearing a part in the 

 stakes, wagers, or adventures, or in betting on the sides 

 or hands of them that do play, or in wagering on the event 

 of any game, sport, pastime, or exercise, win from any 

 other person to himself, or any other or others, any sum of 

 money or valuable thing, shall be deemed guilty of obtain- 

 ing such money or valuable thing from such other person 

 by a false pretence with intent to cheat or defraud such 

 person of the same, and being convicted thereof shall be 

 punished accordingly " (o). 



Tossing coins for wagers is a sport, pastime, or exercise, 

 if not a game within this section {p). 



The "fraud or unlawful device" must be practised The fraud or 

 during the game itself to support an indictment for obtain- 

 ing money by a false pretence, and it is not sufficient that a 

 fraud was resorted to, to induce the prosecutor to play {q). 



Where several persons confederated and combined to- 

 gether to play at skittles, so that the play of one of them 

 should betoken his skill to be much less than it really was, 

 in order that the prosecutor (a looker-on) might be induced 

 to play with him, and thereby lose to him his money, it 

 was held to he an indictable conspiracy (r). 



In order to support a conviction on a count alleging a 

 conspiracy by false pretences and fraudulent devices to cheat 



(o) See Cheating in a Wager, ante, 

 p. 419. In the case of Bin-nett t. 

 Allen (4 Jur., N. S. 488), the Court 

 of Exchequer were equally divided 

 as to whether the term " blackleg" 

 was per se defamatory or not. 



unlawful 

 deTice. 



Conspiracy to 

 cheat. 



