“Mr Garrow, on a former occasion, charged Atkinson with using _dispatches_, that is, _loaded dice_, which in, five minutes, would dispatch £500 out of the pocket of any young man when intoxicated with champagne.”
“_Jan. 26, 1798._ A notice came on in the King’s Bench, Cornet William Moore, 3rd Dragoon Guards, _v._ Captain Hankey. The former had won off the latter, at play, £14,000, for which Hankey had given his bond; but a Court of Inquiry having declared that Moore had cheated him out of it, he made his application to set aside the bond.”
It will be remembered that in that famous prosecution, in 1797, of Lady Buckinghamshire and her friends, their manager, Henry Martindale, was fined £200. Next year he was bankrupt, and we read that “The debts proved under Mr Martindale’s commission amounted to £328,000, besides Debts of Honour, which were struck off to the amount of £150,000.”
“His failure is said to be owing to misplaced confidence in a subordinate, who robbed him of thousands. The first suspicion was occasioned by his purchasing an estate of £500 a year, but other purchases followed to a considerable extent, and it was soon discovered that the Faro Bank had been robbed, sometimes of two thousand guineas a week!
“On the 14th of April 1798, other arrears to a large amount were submitted to and rejected by the Commissioners, who declared a first dividend of one shilling and fivepence in the pound.”
“The Right Honourable Charles James Fox had an old gambling debt to pay to Sir John Lade. Finding himself in cash after a lucky run at Faro, he sent a complimentary card to the knight, desiring to discharge the claim. Sir John no sooner saw the money than he called for pen and ink, and began to figure. ‘What now,’ cried Fox. ‘Only calculating the interest,’ replied the other. ‘Are you so,’ coolly rejoined Charles, and pocketed the cash.’ I thought it was a debt of honour. As you seem to consider it a trading debt, and as I make it an invariable rule to pay my Jew creditors last, you must wait a little longer for your money.’”
Before leaving the eighteenth century, let us hear what Col. Hanger[37] (4th Lord Coleraine) says of private gambling in his time, and undoubtedly he mixed in the very highest society. “If a gentleman in these days has but a few guineas in his purse, and will walk directly up to the Faro table, he will be the most welcome guest in the house; it is not necessary for him to speak, or even bow, to a single lady in the room, unless some unfortunate woman at the gaming-table ask him politely for the loan of a few guineas; then his answer need be but short—‘No, Dolly, no; can’t’; for this ever will be received as wit, though the unfortunate lady’s bosom may be heaving, not from the tenderer passions, but with grief and despair at having lost the last farthing.