Lucrative
Gambling

This fraternity of gambling artists - whether they were to be denominated rooks,[5] sharps, sharpers, black-legs, Greeks, or gripes-were exceedingly numerous, and were dispersed among all ranks of society.

[5] So called because rooks are famous for stealing materials out of other birds' nests to build their own.

The gambling follies and vices of others - of open-hearted youth in Particular - were the great game or pursuit of this odious gambling crew. Though cool and dispassionate themselves, they did all in their power to throw others off their guard, that they might make their advantage of them.

In others they promoted excess of all gambling kinds, whilst they themselves took care to maintain the utmost sobriety and temperance. 'Gamesters,' says Falconer, 'whose minds must be always on the watch to take advantages, and prepared to form gambling calculations, and to employ the memory, constantly avoid a full meal of animal food, which they find incapacitates them for play nearly as much as a quantity of strong liquor would have done, for which reason they feed chiefly on milk and vegetables.'

As profit, not gambling pleasure, was the aim of these knights of darkness, they lay concealed under all shapes and disguises, and followed up their game with all wariness and discretion. Like wise traders, they made it the business of their lives to excel in their calling - gambling.

For this end they studied the secret mysteries of their art of gambling by night and by day; they improved on the scientific schemes of their profound master, Hoyle, and on his deep gambling doctrines and calculations of chances. They became skilful without a rival where skill was necessary, and fraudulent without conscience where fraud was safe and advantageous; and while fortune or chance appeared to direct everything, they practised numberless devices by which they insured her ultimate favours to themselves.

Of these none were more efficacious, because none are more ensnaring, than bribing their young and artless dupes to future gambling by suffering them to win at their first onsets. By rising a winner the dupe imbibed a confidence in his own gambling abilities, or deemed himself a favourite of fortune. He engaged in gambling again, and was again successful--which increased his exultation and confirmed his future confidence; and thus did the simple gudgeon swallow their bait, till it became at last fast hooked.

When rendered thus secure of their prey, they began to level their whole train of artillery against the boasted honours of his short-lived gambling triumph. Then the extensive manors, the ancient forests, the paternal mansions, began to tremble for their future destiny. The pigeon was marked down, and the infernal crew began in good earnest to pluck his rich plumage. The wink was given on his appearance in the room, as a signal of commencing their covert attacks. The shrug, the nod, the hem--every motion of the eyes, hands, feet--every air and gesture, look and word-became an expressive, though disguised, language of fraud and cozenage, big with deceit and swollen with gambling ruin.

Besides this, the card was marked, or 'slipped,' or COVERED. The story is told of a noted sharper of distinction, a foreigner, whose hand was thrust through with a fork by his adversary, Captain Roche, and thus nailed to the table, with this cool expression of concern-- 'I ask your pardon, sir, if you have not the knave of clubs under your hand.' The cards were packed, or cut, or even swallowed. A card has been eaten between two slices of bread and butter, for the purpose of concealment.

With wily craft the gambling sharpers substituted their deceitful 'doctors' or false dice; and thus 'crabs,' or 'a losing game,' became the portion of the 'flats,' or dupes.

There were different ways of throwing dice. There was the 'Stamp'--when the caster with an elastic spring of the wrist rapped the cornet or box with vehemence on the table, the dice as yet not appearing from under the box. The 'Dribble' was, when with an air of easy but ingenious motion, the caster poured, as it were, the dice on the board--when, if he happened to be an old practitioner, he might suddenly cog with his fore-finger one of the cubes.

The 'Long Gallery' was when the dice were flung or hurled the whole length of the board. Sometimes the dice were thrown off the table, near a confederate, who, in picking them up, changed one of the fair for a false die with two sixes. This was generally done at the first throw, and at the last, when the fair die was replaced. The sixes were on the opposite squares, so that the fraud could only be detected by examination. Of course this trick could only be practised at raffles, where only three throws are required.

A pair of false dice was arranged as follows:--

On one die, {Two fours
{Two fives
{Two sixes

On the other, {Two fives
{Two threes
{Two aces

With these dice it was impossible to throw what is at Hazard denominated Crabs, or a losing game--that is, aces, or ace and deuce, twelve, or seven. Hence, the caster always called for his main; consequently, as he could neither throw one nor seven, let his chance be what it might, he was sure to win, and he and those who were in the secret of course always took the odds. The false dice being concealed in the left hand, the caster took the box with the fair dice in it in his right hand, and in the act of shaking it caught the fair dice in his hand, and unperceived shifted the box empty to his left, from which he dropped the false dice into the box, which he began to rattle, called his main seven, and threw.

Having won his gambling stake he repeated it as often as he thought proper. He then caught the false dice in the same way, shifted the empty box again, and threw till he threw out, still calling the same main, by which artifice he escaped suspicion.

Two gambling adventurers would set out with a certain number of signs and signals. The use of the handkerchief during the game was the certain evidence of a good hand. The use of the snuff-box a sign equally indicative of a bad one. An affected cough, apparently as a natural one, once, twice, three, or four times repeated, was an assurance of so many honours in hand.

Rubbing the left eye was an invitation to lead trumps,--the right eye the reverse,--the cards thrown down with one finger and the thumb was a sign of one trump; two fingers and the thumb, two trumps, and so on progressively, and in exact explanation of the whole hand, with a variety of manoeuvres by which chance was reduced to certainty, and certainty followed by ruin.[6]

[6] Bon Ton Magazine, 1791.

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