CRAZE IN ENGLAND.

Franklin Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2, 7 January 1935, Page 2

CRAZE IN ENGLAND.

WOMEN AND GAMBLING. SPREADING IN ENGLAND. “The craze for gambling has seized on the women of England like a lever. - It has spread like an epidemic,” says the “Daily Express.” The writer continues: “Women have a flutter on the stock market. They bet on horses and dogs. They play bridge, poker, chemin-de-fer, roulette for stakes that run into thousands of pounds. Card clubs, where bridge, at stakes ranging between 1/- and £1 a hundred, is played, have sprung up like mushrooms during the past six months to cope with the demand. '“Women scream over the telephone at their stockbrokers when they have lost in a flutter on the stock market. They take months to pay their bookmakers. They throw hysterical tits at roulette and chemin-de-fer. The gambling fever has changed them from temperate, well-mannered human beings to creatures with one thought—to gamble and to win—at any price. And as they do not always win, the husband —or some other man, as one bookmaker said —is half ruined to pay their bills. “These women start mildly—bridge at a shilling a hundred. But the shillings give way to half-crowns, the half-crowns to five shillings, and with in a few days or weeks they are playing for half-a-sovereign, or, on occasion, a sovereign a hundred. At poker the stakes run even higher. One woman lost £ISOO in one night recently. Weekly Accounts. “Accounts may run for one week. At the end of that time the women must settle up. Their debts have accumulated —in some cases to nearly £IOOO. They cannot pay. But they feel that they must play next week. The luck of the cards will surely change in their favour. Inevitably, the relationship between husband and wife is broken up, and in the place of a once happy home stands ruin. “A bookmaker states that if it were not for women, dog-racing would become unimportant in this country. In the last two years the number of women betting on horse-racing has doubled. The amounts' too, have increased. Now, £1 a ralce is ‘a small bet,’ and among these women the habit is growing of allowing accounts to run until the amounts are staggering.

“A woman who owed £3OO at the end of the last flat racing season found she could not pay it. She went to a money-lender. And now her dress allowance for a year is going to pay off this debt. Her husband is wondering why she looks so dowdy.

“The biggest gamblers are usually women whose allowances or incomes do not exceed £IOOO a year. They play twice a week at the banned games—chemin-de-fer and roulette — from eleven to four in houses l t,o let’ which are rented for three months. Then the players move on to escape the vigilance of the police.

“The one game in London where women are not allowed free rein is the Stock Exchange, simply • because stock-brokers do not like them. ‘Women,’ said several of them, ‘will never cut their losses.*They complain when they win, because they think it is not enough, and they complain when they lose. But we cannot keep them out. Women are on the increase down here in the city.”