WOMEN CARDSHARPERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 287, 2 December 1911, Page 18

WOMEN CARDSHARPERS.

Eleven women were refused admission to a charity card party organised by St. Francis of Assissl Church, Brooklyn, because they were believed to be cardsharpers. An Investigation has unearthed the fact that a number of women make a business of attending such affairs to win the valuable prizes offered by practices similar to those who haunt the transatlantic liners. The women are not professional gamblers, ■but members of respectable families who are unable to resist the temptation to cheat at cards. It is a common practice for New York -women to give large whist, bridge, and euchre parties throughout the winter to raise funds for charities. The tickets cost 4/. and occasionally ns many as 1500 arc sold at one party, many of wfrlch are held In the ball-rooms of the fashionable hotels. The prizes are always of considerable value, worth frequently £10 and £20 each, and sometimes much more. It has become known that women band themselves together for concerted work by lip signals, , by marking cards with tiny pin-pricks and otherwise, and, according to Father Kelleher. of St. Francis of Arrlssl, who discovered the conspiracy, even know how to stack cards. Father Kellcher's discovery was due to an extraordinary accident. lie ■was riding In a Brooklyn tramcar -when he : overheard two women seated next to him discussing how they intended to capture the prizes by cheating. Father Kelleher told other priests of the church, and they watched the doorway of the Forty-seventh ■Regiment Armoury, where the card party was being given. Father Kelleher detected the two women with nine others as they' were endeavouring to enter, and told them they could not get In. No explanation was offered, and the women did not demand any, but hastily disappeared. The churches and charity organisations generally are being notified of Ihe dlrcotery. with lie suggestion Hi it concerted effort should be made th!-: winter to break tlie practice. It Is a <ll*i»hted point whether the women | are liable i« arrest for their cheating.