A GAMBLING HELL

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2060, 19 September 1885, Page 5 (Supplement)

A GAMBLING HELL

By G. B. Srus.

G\hblin<j houses in England are illegal. Roulette and rouge et noire aie played in holes and corners, and the motherly hand of the law ohastises those who risk a pot of beer on a game at bagatelle. In consequence of the abstraction of a few poitage stamps by offioa boys, ready-money bookmakers have been transported to Boulogne, and the man who would nowadays have five shillings on the Derby or the Leger must sneak about like a pickpocket to got his money on. All this is very proper and very right. It is highly desirable that games of chance should be digoouraged, and that the national pastime of the turf should be reserved for the aristooraoy. So much for the gnat we strain at. Now let us look into the Kaleidoscope and study the camel we swallow. I* is a bright sunshiny day in October as we traverse the streets of London in learoh of the gambling hell I am about to show you. Here it is at last. Thousands of people are passing in and out of it ; there is a babel of many voices Bhouting the odds, there is the scum of every European nation hanging about tho doors ; there are winners and losers with flushed oheoks and gleaming eyes eddying ever round the spot ; there are joy and despair ; fortune and ruin, elbowing and pushing their way through the crowd of gamblers at every turn we take. There is no concealment about the place. It is admirably conducted, it has its rules and its guardians, and .its code of morality, and is not only winked at, but it is patronised by the Government. It is the Argyll Rooms of Commerce— it is the London Sfcook Exchange. Into the Bacred [ edifice itself we may not penetrate. We have not paid the fees demanded for admission to the ring. The betting agents who made a living by deducting a commission from all the bets made on stooks and shares are careful to keep their clients outside. The fine old gentlemen from Clapham, the young aristocrats from the West, and the German and Greek adventurers who are the recognised bookmakers, are very particular. They have little dens in the neighborhood where they sep their clients, give them the tip, and, whether it oomes off or not, take a commission for the investment. Never, in the palmiest days of Baden-Baden or ftms, was such a crowd of frenzied gamblers gathered around the board of green cloth as may be seen any day in the six hanging about the thoroughfares that bound the City Hell. We cannot pass into tho " reserved enclosure " and witness the howling and shrieking of the professionals ; we oannot enjoy the horseplay, the bonneting, and the praotioal joking with which they enliven their labours ; but we can creep quietly up the stairs of the bookmaker's private den and watch him at work with his clients. Yonder goes a young man, whose features as he passes us betray a feverish anxiety. He is, hollow-eyed and his lips tremble. Every now and then he mutters to himself and clenches his hands. He is one of the gamblers, and his fate trembles in tho balance. Thousands such as be pass along this road to ruin every week of the year, and the bookmakers know how much money they have left by their appearance. John Huntley ia on the road to his broker's den. It is just a year since he paid his first visit. Then he went along Throgmortonstreet with a light, buoyant tiead and a light heart. He was full of life and hope, and he was just going "to have a ehy at Caledonians " because he'd a little money idle and he'd been told they were oertain to go up. He bought his " Caleys," they went np, and he sold. At settling day he had £150 to take. Then he tried his luck at something else, and he made a fiver, then he lost fifty, then he won twenty. He became n daily visitor to the Stock Exohange. He neglected his business in the City, and spent his time hanging about his broker's office. He grew daring and avaricious. He got the tip that a certain stock would have a tremendous rise in the market, and he went what is technically called " a bustor." He bought largely, and tho stock fell. Ho hesitated to sell when the loss was comparatively slight, and paid the difference, hanging on in the hope that they would recover and recoup him. In the elegant language of Capol-court, when you refuse to part with falling stock, but hang on in hope of a recovery, you "let it sweat." But Huntley was a man of limited means, and his broker, as the difference grew larger and larger, refused to continue the transaction without a large cover. B token) are business men, and they would rather their olients lost thoir all thao that they should loco ft pound. Unable to satisfy his man of business that he would pay, whatever the loss, the stock was sold there and then, and Huntley had lost C2OOO, That partially ruined him. It drained his business, and orippled bun even in hi 1 ? homo ciicumstances. Ha had still enough left to pay his creditors in full, but he .had to give up hta business. He had not the capital to carry it on. From tho wreck he saved £' 1000, and went into ft smaller hou?o and )i\od more modestly —but he Htdek to the Stock Exohange. I would I could piint to you tho misery whioh thia hell biing3, not only on the gamblers, but on thoir iancjint wives and children, I would I could take you down to Iluntley's suburban home and show you tho mispiable, dejected man as he sits mooilily auionget his household pod?. I would that you could pea hi<? pooi young wife, luuiefoimcd froiii ft plump, happy giil into a nervous, tearful woman, from whose life the light has faded for cvor. I svui Id that, like

Asmodeus, I could lift the roof and show you ruin drawing its network slowly and surely about the little home, and let you see the lives of husband and wife and ohildreji drifting slowly on to the cruel rocks where they will be shattered and engulfed by the angry waves. ! And for this ruin the gambling house is responsible. Huntley is but one of the thousands who are stripped annually of all they possess in this modern Alsatia. Not only of their money, but of their health and of their happiness. Over the graves of hundreds, if truth were fashionable in churchyards, might be plaoed the legend, " Stock Exchange." It feed* not only the cemetery, but the Baukruptoy Court, and the lunatio asylum, and the poor house. The gambler ends hit days too often himself rather than face the wretched future; but his widow and his fatherless* children are left to fight the world as best they can. On the Stock Exchange in o»e short day a man can not only ruin himself, he oan blast the whole after life of his inntcent children ; and the gentleman who help him to do so are Clapham ohapcl-goers and chairman of charitable institutions. They are stockbrokers, not vulgar betting men. They don't take half-crowns and " dollars " — they take every blessed halfpfe^jv you have in the world, and as much of anybody else's as you oan*iay your hands on. Defaulting cashiers, absconding treasurers, fraudulent trustees— what is their story when it is revealed in the courts of justice? In nine cases out of every ten the culprit oonfeBses that losses on the Stock Exchange forced him into orimc. He .borrowed other people's money without th«ir consent, in the vain hope of winning back his own. Follow John Huntley this bright autumn day as he darts down one of the numerous | courts near the Stock Exchange, and with nervous tread goes up the winding ttair that leads to his broker's den. He has played his last card. If the shares of the Blank Railway Company fall in the market he is utterly and irretrievably ruined. He ia a felon and must fly. Now that he 13 known to be a ruined gambler, he has to make a deposit before bis broker will do business for him. The deposit h^ has stolen. He is lure that Blankf will go up, and he will be able to replaoe the money and take the difference. Ho needs it. His bills at home ate all unpaid, and tradesmen are clamouring. Worn with anxiety, his wife's health has given way, and she needs a doctor's daily attendance. But dootor's must be paid. Her heart is slowly breaking at the ruin of her home. She is sinking into her grave— her last hours, hours of speechless agony and (error for her helpless children's future— and all beoause there is a big licensed gambling house where men are urged on to their ruin It is in that house that John Huntley has staked fortune andhonouf, the life of his wife and the future of his children. He has played his last oaiJ, and he is creeping up the narrow staircase to v -ie " office "to learn bia fate. Listen. Click 1 cliok I click ! The noise is familiar to him. There is music in that, in spite of his misery and suffering, Bets the blood dancing in his veins, and bangs the colour to his hollow cheeks. Click 1 click 1 click ! It is the telegraph at work. It is the latest invention of the spider to tickle and tics the flies. Enter the spider's den and seo. On a little stand at the side of the room is a telegraph machine connected with the Stock Exchange, and slowly from it there i 3 rolled off the printed tape. Every bargain transaoted in " the house " is registered by the unwinding tape, whioh rolls off the reel and twines downward like a stealthy snake into a basket on the floor. Click ! click ! click 1 Every click is the death knell to some one. If it brings fortune to one. it must bring loss to another. Look at the eager crowd of breathless " clients " who surround it. The proprietor does their business. He buys and sells for them for a commission. On this ever-falling tape they can judge of the stato of the market before they venture, and watch their fate after they have ventured. Ever and anon the silence is broken by the despairing cry or oath of ono of the gamblers. The tape has brought him the result of bis venture. It is loss- -it may be ruin. John Huntley presses to the front. Cliok ! click 1 cliok 1 With strained eyeballs and clenched fista he watohes tho oruel tape as it comes slowly down and down out of the relentless jaws of the instrument. It mocks him. There are bargains after bargains recorded, but none in Blanks. There is a dull aching feeling at bis heart, and his face grows suddenly cold, then hot. He dare not ask the state of the market in Blanks. He waits and watches the tape. Cliok 1 cliok! click 1 It has come at last. The oracle has spoken. Blanks are being heavily sold in anticipation of a fall. He makes no cry, ho edges his way through the men about him and goes quickly down the fatal stairs. He is a ruined man— ruined beyond all hope of salvation. Out in the bright sunlight he feels dazed. The hustle and bustle are at their height. The laughing clerks of the gambling agents have lunched and had their cigar and pint of champagne, and they are bandying jokeß and tossiug for sovereigns, or making beta on the day's races, out in the asphalted streets. No one interferes with them or orders them to move on. This 13 Alsatia, and the law stops outside. John Huntley wnlk* quickly through them, and wanders into Cbeapside. 110 is thinking of nothing— he ia wandering. Tnero is nothing more in life for him. lie wanders on till ho comes to King William-slrc-nt — iti'l he wanders on till he comes to L-mdon Bridge. Then ho suddenly thinks. * ♦ • • • There lio before rae as I write, tw 0 things, a card soliciting my \ole ami intcicsfc (or tho admission of some orphan children to one of the great charitable institutions, and a cuttiug from a newspaper. Thus run the card : — "Yeur vote and interest are respectfully solicited for Ada Eli/a Huntley, whose f.ither destroyed hi.iwlf in a moment of tampoiary insanity, induced by heavy knsas on tho Stock Exchange, and whose mother died of a broken heart a few day a nfterw/ird''. There ■we four children totally unprovided for." Thus runa the cutting :— " Charles Jones, publican, of vWhiteehanel, was charged with allowing g^ibling in his houfe. A police-coustable proved that two youths played a gams of bagitelle in the dofend'uH'fl house for ft pint oi beer v The migi^trate said that in this instance ha should inflict a small flue, but the defendant must understand that to allow gambling of any kind was illegal. Gambling wa3 tho ourse of Hie country, and it must be put down in every shape and form." Theiw is no such thing as cla*s legislation in TuglftuJ. Who du'Ci (0 fi* Ibatyou maj iu>t hr/!U\l ft pint of beer in Whitcchapel, but that you may ha<jaiil all you hft\o in the world in Capel court ?