Female Gamblers. steal it. The theft was discovered, and the Countess adequately punished. Many in fluential friends tried hard to have her pun ishment mitigated, but Bonaparte was inex orable, and left her to her fate. In England, as in France, the passion for gambling has often reduced women of the noblest birth to the lowest depth of de pravity. From allusions in old plays such as "The Provoked Husband," and from Walpole's " Letters" and other publications, it is evident that the sacrifice of honor was not an infrequent method of paying gam bling debts. The stakes were generally high, and the debts incurred were a first charge on the sensitiveness of the unfortun ate lady players. So tender these — if debts crowd fast upon her, She'll pawn her virtue to preserve her honor.
Hogarth, in his picture entitled " Piquet, or Virtue in Danger," realized exactly the fe male gambler's fall; and his truthfulness was amply testified to by frequent occur rences in actual life. A single illustration of these may suffice. A lady was married while very young to an English noble. Ere long she was introduced to a professional gamestress, was led into play, and lost more in a single night than ever she could hope to pay. Her honor paid the debt. Soon afterwards the gambler's boasts revealed the truth to the lady's husband, and a duel was the necessary consequence. The gambler was shot dead by the injured husband, after which the latter actually offered to pardon his wife, and wished to restore her to her former position. The wife refused, gave her self up entirely to gambling and its results, and the husband died of a broken heart. The stakes for which ladies played dur ing the closing years of the eighteenth and the opening years of the present cen tury were often of considerable magnitude. In 1776, a lady in a fashionable quarter of London lost, at a single sitting — according to the "Annual Register" — no less than
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three thousand guineas at loo; and at Lady Buckinghamshire's faro table in St. James's Square, there were often enormous sums lost in play. Lady Buckinghamshire, it may be re marked, was, perhaps, the most notorious gamestress of her day. She actually slept with a pair of pistols and a blunderbuss by her side for the protection of her cherished bank. Her career, however, was a some what chequered one. In the " Times " for March 13, 1797, there is a police-court report which goes to show that Lady Buck inghamshire's speculations were not always free from worry. A couple of days prior to the report her ladyship, together with Lady E. Luttrell and a Mrs. Sturt, was brought up at the Marlborough Street police-court, London, and fined fifty pounds for play ing at faro; while Henry Martindale, her manager, was also mulcted in two hundred pounds. Later in the same year her croupier got into trouble over the disap pearance of the cash-box. Awkward stories of stolen purses, snuff-boxes and cloaks be gan to be told, and, finally, Martindale be came bankrupt to the tune of three hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds, besides "debts of honor" to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Lady Buckinghamshire, by the way, was not the only titled dame of the olden days who not only gambled, but kept gaming establishments. One of these professional gamestresses actually applied to the House of Lords for protection against police in trusion, on the plea that she was a peeress of Great Britain. "I, Dame Mary, Baroness of Mordington," ran the petition, " do hold a house in the Great Piazza, Convent Garden, for, and as an assembly, where all persons of credit are at liberty to frequent and play at such diversions as are used at other assemblys . . . and I demand all those privileges that be long to me as a peeress of Great Britain appertaining to my said assembly." The
