A PLUCKER PLUCKED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 61, 30 July 1912, Page 5

A PLUCKER PLUCKED.

LONDON GAMING-HOUSE KEEPER FINED £3OO. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. London, July 26. Edge, keeper of the Kensington gaming-house raided recently, has been fined £3OO. FASHIONABLE •' HELLS." ENORMOUS PROFITS! MADE BY THE OWNERS. Attention H now being directed very strongly to the growing scandal of private gambling hells iu London. Their existence and increase, owing to the inaction of the police, has been known in the West End for some time. That many young men and not a few women have pretty well been ruined at them has also been common gossip for months. It is amazing that the police have raided none of them, while they devote their attention so closely to the unimportant foreign hells in Soho. These fashionable resorts arc situated right in the heart of the West End—there are half-a-dozen flourishing ones within three hundred yards of Bond street and Piccadilly. The ; only introduction is the card of a friend; nothing is paid except over the tables, and refreshments on a very liberal scale are provided free. Chemin de Fer and roulette are the principal games, and it is said that quite recently a young cavalry officer lost £7OOO at ouc of them in an afternoon.

Of course, the owner of the hell has his commission on the "hank," and it is estimated that one of them, at whose splendid house—not flat, as has been stated—the most reckless set of turf gamblers congregate, netted over ,C 50,000 profit last season. They are all now in full swing, and will be until after Ascot —unless the police interfere. Their existence must be perfectly well known to the police, not only the men on the beat, but to the chiefs of Scotland Yard, and it is very likely that questions will be asked 'in Parliament before long unless something is done. A new and unpleasant feature of these places —as far as London is concerned—is that ladies frequent them principally in the afternoon, but some even at night. This does not mean ladies of the half-world, but ladies of position and, needless to say, wealth. The appetite for gambling among women has been whetted of late years by the numerous bridge clubs, at many of which they preponderate, and it is at such clubs that the nominal limit is mo>t often exceeded by a regular system of '•'side'' beta.

Oambling is also making itself most objectionably felt in certain golf clubs, while heavy betting among a considerable section of members has become quite the rule. There is a sweepstake every year in connection with White's Club, and last year it amounted to ,£IOOO. This year it was played at Prince's Sandwich. and was some ,C3OO lew. Of course, White's, tvedless to say. is not a golf club, but its members nearly all belong to giilf dubs, and the creation of this gambling event shows how far gambling enters into play at all the best golt clubs. At one club not thirty miles from London singles are played for a slake of

anything from .€2.". lo CIOO-sometimes three or four times that amount is played for.