GAMBLING WIVES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 January 1925, Page 15

GAMBLING WIVES.

TRAGEDY OF THE AGE. Card clubs are flourishing nowadays as they have seldom flourished before (says an English writer). In the north-west districts of London they are as thick as the leaves that strew the brooks iii Vallombrosa, and new ones spring up constantly. Tlisir advent is principally due to women, of all ages, acquiring the card habit in increasing numbers. The real women gamblers are those to be found in the card clubs in the afternoons. These are the wives who try to hide their passion from the husbands who spend the evenings with them. Under the pretence of going out to a tea .party or a matinee, they skip away to their clubs, and often lose money that should be spent necessities. !

The gambling wife is generally between the ages of 28 and 40, and is that typically modern young married woman who must have a thrill two or three times a week if existence is to be bearable to her. And her passion is not. bridge, but poker. Speaking from personal observation, I consider that women are immeasurably better poker players than men. At poker the female of the species is indeed more deadjy than the male. She is indeed out to win every time, and lias none of those delicate masculine scruples that prevent her taking money with a light heart from a loser. A woman’s features are nearly always more expressionless than those of a man; she has three or four conventional expressions than she can turn on at. will without allowing them to betray her thoughts. In consequence, the “poker face,” inscrutable and immobile, is easy of attainment for /her. At most clubs where poker is played you will find at a table of seven players four women to three men, sometimes even five to two. At a. certain club in London there was at one time a young woman player, under 30 years of age, who did not miss a single night’s play. This woman’s husband had become bankrupt, and was unable to maintain his family. But they lived comfortably for at least a year on her winnings. When their maid had an evening out, the husband would remain at home with the child, so that his wife might not- miss the game that meant so much to their income. When short-sleeved dresses were in fashion, some of these women players developed a poker arm; the skin from, wrist to elbow was faintly' red from the constant placing down and picking up of cards.