WOMEN GAMBLERS AT MONTE CARLO

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1921, Page 1

WOMEN GAMBLERS AT MONTE CARLO

(By A. E. Manning Foster). MONTE CARLO. It is woman’s year at the Casino. Never have there been so many women gamblers. Just now Englishwomen predominate. There is a fair sprinkling of French, Italians, and Spanish, and a lew Russians. But it is essentially the season of Englishwomen. Some of them, it is easy to see, have never been here before. They do not know their way about or understand the games. But that does not deter them in the least. They plank their money down and wait to see what happens, and they keep sharp eyes upon it too. A man may have his innings snatched but a woman—never ! There is novices’ luck—who can doubt it?

These newcomers who win at the start arc the staunchest and most regular attendants. They become bitten with the gambling fever and cannot miss a sitting.

Alorning, noon, and night they come to the rooms, drawn by an irresistible lure. For them the many other delights that are to he found in -Monte Carlo and the neighbourhood exist in vain.

Their lives are centred on the hectic pleasures of the tables. You can tell them at a glance. Their eyes are bright, their cheeks Hushed, and, as the days go on, a strained, anxious look comes into their faces and little hard lines develop at the corners o! their mouths.

They have gambling lever very badly. It must run its course. Most ol them will get over it. .A tew "ill become chronic cases and "ill join that little band of women who cannot help it, women who must gamble as others must take drink* or drugs. Not that the majority of women who ilirong the rooms are ol this kind. There are many sweet and lovely women who have their little ilutters just for fun and as an occasional diversion. They come in from Menton, Beaulieu, Gap Martin, Nice, Cannes, and other places on the Cote d’Azur foi an hotii or two. Many of them are very attractive. No one could mistake them for the

“hardy annuals,” the habituees who come year after year and whose faces are known by every croupier and chef de partie in the Casino. The ordinary normal woman is not out to make large sums of money. II she can win the price of a new hat or a pair of silk stockings she is delighted. Bub the gambler must go on, win or lose. There arc nightmare figures here—women who might have come out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. One in particular haunts- me. A gaunt, sinister spectre in black, with colourless, blanched, and bewnnkled face, she wanders about the rooms. Although an old woman, she is too restless to sit down. She flits from table to table, staking high, muttering to herself, her itching fingers never still. She has the saddest of all asspects. . Quarrels occur now and again. I non are heated disputes among the women. Recently a Frenchwoman claimed an English woman’s winnings. The diet decided against her. The infuriated Frenchwoman thereupon seized a lake and scooped into her lap nil the counters on the table in her vicinity. She was gently removed and the game proceeded, after the hank had paid the'claims of all those " hose money she had seized.