THE MASTER PASSION

Evening Star, Issue 11606, 17 June 1902, Page 8

THE MASTER PASSION

We hear a good deal of gaming in shares and other ways by Society women to-day. In former days many titled women not only gambled, but kept gaming hells. In 1746, the Baroness Mord ngton, who kept one of these establishments in the great Piazza, Covent Garden, appealed to the House of Lords on the plea of her peerage to protect her from the intrusion of the law officers. Happily the Lords decided that no person is entitled to privilege of peerage against any prosecution for keeping a gaming-house. Perhaps the most notorious gamestreaa, however, was the Countess of Buckinghamshire, who, in 1797, was fined £SO for gaming, while the man who kept the faro table for her was fined £2OO. An extraordinary series of thefts was perpetrated at the house of this distinguished culprit, and the ruin of many men was traceable to her establishment. Among the notable names which occur in the l.st of gamblers of the old days there come at once to hand those of Lords Halifax, Anglesey, and Shaftsbury. It was of this trio that Locke tells the story of his sitting by and writing down the extpletives they uttered as. they sat at play. Being questioned as to his occupation, he replied to Lord Anglesey;

anxious not to lose anything you utter”— an irony which made the three ashamed and put an end to their game.