Omniana/Volume 2/Irish Gambling
208. Irish Gambling.
Stanihurst describes a singular class of gamblers among the wild Irish of his time. "There is among them, (he[1] says,) a brotherhood of karrowes, that proffer to play at cards all the year long, and make it their only occupation. They play away mantle and all to the bare skin, and then truss themselves in straw or leaves; they wait for passengers in the highway, invite them to game upon the green, and ask no more but companions to make them sport. For default of other stuff they pawn their glibs, the nails of their fingers and toes, their dimissaries, which they leese or redeem at the courtesy of the winner."
Some fifteen or twenty years ago an instance of this playing at mayhem occurred in England. Two Smithfield drovers tost up for each others ears. They were in savage earnest, and the winner cropt his antagonist with a common knife, close to the head. This however seems to have proceeded from a bravado of brutality on both sides, not from a spirit of gambling, of which there is less among the common people in England than in any other country. Those who have any propensity to this fatal passion find it sufficiently gratified by the lotteries, the most pernicious manner in which it is possible to raise money from the nation.
While this sheet was in the Printer's hands, a more extraordinary instance of frantic or drunken gambling than either of the foregoing, appeared in the London newspapers. It follows here as related in theTimes of April 17, 1812
"On Wednesday evening an extraordinary investigation took place at Bow Street. Croker, the officer, was passing the Hampstead Road; he observed at a short distance before him two men on a wall, and directly after saw the tallest of them, a stout man about six feet high, hanging by his neck from a lamp-post, attached to the wall, being that instant tied up and turned off by the short man. This unexpected and extraordinary sight astonished the officer; he made up to the spot with all speed, and just after he arrived there, the tall man who had been hanged, fell to the ground, the handkerchief with which he had been suspended having given way. Croker produced his staff, said he was an officer, and demanded to know of the other man the cause of such conduct; in the mean time the man who had been hanged recovered, got up, and on Croker interfering, gave him a violent blow on the nose, which nearly knocked him backward. The short man was endeavouring to make off; however, the officer procured assistance, and both were brought to the office, when the account they gave was, that they worked on canals. They had been together on Wednesday afternoon, tossed up for money, and afterwards for their clothes; the tall man who was hanged won the other's jacket, trowers and shoes; they then tossed up which should hang the other, and the short one won the toss. They got upon the wall, the one to submit, and the other to hang him on the lamp-iron. They both agreed in this statement. The tall one who had been hanged, said, if he won the toss, he would have hanged the other. He said, he then felt the effects on his neck at the time he was hanging, and his eyes was so much swelled that he saw double. The Magistrates expressed their horror and disgust, and ordered the man who had been hanged to find bail for the violent and unjustifiable assault upon the officer, and the short one for hanging the other. Not having bail, they were committed to Bridewell for trial."