NIPPED IN THE BUD

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 47, 25 February 1937, Page 17

NIPPED IN THE BUD

"MONTE CARLO" STUNT.

GAMBLING AT SYDNEY)

LEISURED CLASS OF. WOMEN

(From "The Post's" Representative.) ; SYDNEY, February 18.

A series of raids by Sydney police on fashionable-gambling-houses has led them to the conclusion that an organised attempt has been made by a hidden principal to establish a "Monte Carlo" here to cater mainly for the gambling instincts of leisured women. Police are equally convinced that the last three raids they have made, within, four months, have killed this attempt.

The game chosen for these establishments has been chemin-de-fer. " Complaints by husbands embittered by their wjves' large financial losses led to a raid on a chemin-de-fer house at Bellevue Hill on Sunday night, resulting in fines totalling £175 being imposed on three principals. Seventeen, men and women found on the premises forfeited £2 bail each becausa of failure to appear. ..,;

Inspector Keefe, chief of the antivice squad, informed the Magistrate that chemin-de-fer was introduced to Sydney only a year ago and was being taken to the other States. The Police Department did not want it to get a hold. In the house raided on Sundayslips found showed that £205 worth of chips were purchased that night. At times large sums of money were won. and lost at the game. The'management took 5 per cent, from the winnings, which ran into a considerable amount in a night. The premises had been, used for some months'past; They were elaborately furnished; drinks and supper were provided and a butler and: a maid were employed. The place was a cottage furnished as a gaming-house and rented at eight guineas a week. Chips were sold at ss, 10s, and £1. Complaints had been received by the Deputy Commissioner of Police from, relatives of women who had lost large sums of money. It was said that when, patrons ran out of cash they gave 1.0.U.5. The patrons were mainly young people, of a class above the ordinary wage-earner. The premises had been used solely for chemin-de-fer for several monthSj but to evade police detection, the principals changed their headquarters frequently.. :• THE GAMBLING INSTINCT. Private inquiries show that 50 per cent, of Sydney's unoccupied women gamble in some way. Chemin-de-fer is still played in many fashionable homes, and although it is known that wagers run between <£ 10 and £100, it remains essentially a private transaction. Start-ing-price betting still remains the most popular form of a feminine "nutter." Bridge comes an easy second, with perhaps poker next. There is a fair amount of private betting on pontoon and "mosh," but mah jongg, so fashionable five or six years ago, has practically died out. . . "You would probably find that many wives are complaining of their husbands gambling therent money away,'* said Dr. A. H. Marton, of the Australian Institute of Industrial Psychology. "Even a two or three shillings win at starting-price exhilarates a woman, just as a; bargain does, but it is only an expression of the acquisitive instinct. You can trace this back to the cave. The magpie which seizes golf balls, for which it has no use, reveals 'this characteristic, and the bower bird, although more utilitarian in design, shows the possessive instinct. While the gambling spirit can be curbed generally it is too primitively entrenched to be eradicated, and efforts to do so often drive the evil deeper." :,