have received information that such is the case in the event of my making one false step, and which I have every reason to believe is true."" Crockford was examined, but the Committee got very little out of that old fox, except the fact that he had given up all active connection with the establishment in St James's Street for over four years. Mr Mayne was recalled on the 9th May 1844, and gave evidence that, two nights previously, an entry was made into all houses, known to be gaming-houses in town, seventeen in number, with the result of a fine haul of men, money, and gaming implements. The outcome of the Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament was the passing, on 8th August 1845, of 8-9 Vic., c. 109, "An Act to amend the Law against Games and Wagers "-and for many years afterwards professional gaming-houses in London were a tradition of the past. Now, however, they abound, thanks to the laxity of the law with regard to so-called clubs. Here, then, ends the account of this phase of gambling, as it has been thought inexpedient to give any modern instances of play at so-called Clubs, or Card-sharping. CHAPTER XI Wagers and Betting-Samson-Greek and Roman betting-In the 17th Century— "Lusty Packington "-The rise of betting in the 18th Century-Walpole's story of White's-Betting in the House of Commons-Story by Voltaire— Anecdotes of betting-Law suit concerning the Chevalier d'Eon. BETTING, or rather, that peculiar form of wager which consists in a material pledge in corroboration of controverted assertions, is of very ancient date, and we meet with it in one of the early books of the Bible, see Judges xiv. where in vv. 12, 13, Samson makes a distinct bet-owns he has lost in v. 18, and pays his bet, v. 19. "12. And Samson said unto them, I will now put a riddle unto you if ye can certainly declare it me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty sheets and thirty changes of garments. 13. But, if ye cannot declare it me, then shall you give me thirty sheets and thirty changes of garments. And they said unto him, put forth thy riddle that we may hear it. And "14. And he said unto them, out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. they could not, in three days, expound the riddle. "15. And it came to pass, on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson's wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father's house with fire: have ye called us to take that we have? is it not so? "16. And Samson's wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto her, I have not told it my father, nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee? "16. And she wept before him the seven days, while the feast lasted; and it came to pass, on the seventh day, that he told her, because she lay sore upon him and she told the riddle to the children of her people. : "18. And the men of the city said unto him, on the seventh day, before the sun went down, what is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said unto them, if ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle. "19. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave changes of raiment unto them which expounded the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and he went up to his father's house, "20. But Samson's wife was given to his companion, whom he had used as his friend." Now, in this very ancient story, we find embodied as much roguery and crime as in any modern turf episode. Samson bet without any means of paying, if he lost he lost, and was a defaulter. But, to pay this " debt of honour,” he had recourse to wholesale murder and robbery-to satisfy men, who to his own knowledge, had (to use a modern expression)" tampered with the stable." The early Greeks betted, as we find in Homer's Iliad, b. xxiii. 485-7 where Idomeneus offers a bet to the lesser Ajax to back his own opinion: Δεῦρό νυν ὴ τρίποδος περιδώμεθον, ἠὲ λέβητος “ Ιστορα δ' Ατρείδην Αγαμέμνονα θείομεν άμφω. 66 Now, come on! A wager stake we, of tripod, or of caldron ; Judge, whether foremost are those mares: and so Learn shalt thou, to thy cost!" In Homer's Odyssey, xxiii. 78, Eurycleia wagers her life to Penelope that Ulysses has returned: Aristophanes in his Equites, 791; Acharnes, 772, 1115; and Nebula, 644, gives examples of wagers; and, in the eighth idyll of Theocritus, Daphins proposes a bet to Menalcas about a singing match. Among the Romans, Virgil tells us of a wager in his third Eclogue of the Bucolics, 28-50, between Menalcas and Damotas, which is virtually the same as that of Theocritus, and Valerius Maximus tells us how a triumph was awarded by the senate to Lutatius, the Consul, who had defeated the Carthaginian fleet. The prætor Valerius, having also been present in the action, asserted that the victory was his, and that a triumph was due to him also. The question came before the judge; but not until Valerius had first, in support of his assertion, deposited a stake, against which Lutatius deposited another. But in classical time they seem to have known little about odds. The word wager is an English word—and was spelt in Middle English, Wageoure, or Wajour, as in The Babee's Book. "No waiour non with hym thou lay, Ne at the dyce with hym to play." It was in early use, for we have the Wager of Battel, which was a practical bet between two men as to the justice of their cause. This ordeal was in force until 1819, when it was done away with by 59 Geo. III., c. 46. In Shakespeare's time betting was common, and the practice of giving and taking odds was well known, as we may see in Hamlet, Act v. s. 2, where Osrick, speaking to Hamlet, says, "The King, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary horses; against which he hath imponed, as I take it, six French Rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdles, hangers and so." In Cymbeline, Act i. s. 5, we have a bet, which is so serious that it has to be recorded. Iachimo says, "I dare thereupon pawn the moiety of my estate to your ring, which, in my opinion, o'ervalues it something," and, ultimately, ten thousand crowns are laid against the ring, and Iachimo says, "I will fetch my gold, and have our two wagers recorded." By the way, there was an epitaph on Combe, the usurer, which has been attributed to Shakespeare, which intimates the laying of odds. "Ten in the hundred lies here ingraved ; 'Tis a hundred to ten, his soul is not sav'd." It is recorded of Sir John Packington, called "Lusty Packington" (Queen Elizabeth called him "her Temperance"), that he entered into articles to swim against three noblemen for £3000 from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich; but the queen, by her special command, prevented the bet being carried out. Howell in his Epistolæ Ho-Eliana says: "If one would try a petty conclusion how much smoke there is in a pound of Tobacco, the ashes will tell him: for, let a pound be exactly weighed, and the ashes kept charily and weighed afterwards, what wants of a pound weight in the ashes, cannot be denied to have been smoke which evaporated into air. I have been told that Sir Walter Rawleigh won a wager of Queen Elizabeth upon this nicety." Men betted, but their wagers are not recorded until the eighteenth century, and one of the earliest of these is told in Malcolm's Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the eighteenth century. "Mrs Crackenthorpe, the Female Tatler of 1709, tells us that four worthy Senators lately threw their hats into a river, laid a crown each whose hat should first swim to the mill, and ran hallooing after them; and he that won the prize, was in a greater rapture than if he had carried the most dangerous point in Parliament."" "There was an established Cock pit in Prescot Street, Goodman's Fields, 1712: there the Gentlemen of the East entertained themselves, while the Nobles and others of the West were entertained by the edifying exhibition of the agility of their running footmen. His Grace of Grafton declared his man was unrivalled in speed; and the Lord Cholmondeley betted him that his excelled even the unrivalled; accordingly, the ground was prepared for a two |