Gambling

Gambling

Sources

Background. Colonists knew many board, card, and gambling games that were popular in Europe. For the most part these were inside activities played in taverns or private homes. Often they were played for money and rewarded both luck and skill. Men and women played various kinds of games with each other. Heavy gambling was a male vice since women did not have access to the taverns and private clubs where much of this play occurred. During the eighteenth century taverns became larger, offering more rooms and thus a greater variety of games and diversions. While the law attempted to limit such recreation right from the beginning, especially on the Sabbath, it was not successful. People wanted to play and used even Sunday time to do it.

Backgammon. Among the oldest games known to humans is backgammon. Ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, Japan,

China, and the Near East all have versions of a game played on a board using dice and pieces moved along the board. By the Middle Ages all European nations had a form of backgammon, also called trictrac. The Spanish, French, Dutch, and English all brought it with them to their colonies. As early as 1656 New Netherland listed “backgammon or ticktack” among a host of other “idle and forbidden exercises and plays” which were banned on Sunday. Like so many other games, backgammon was portable and required little equipment. It could be played on a table with the points inlaid into it or on a portable game board or box. Taverns and coffeehouses often had multiple games going at once, each making the characteristic click of the pieces being laid down.

Billiards. Played on a special table with a cue and balls, billiards was known to the many European nationalities that settled in America. Because the average billiard table was twelve feet long, it was played in public houses, taverns, or the homes of the wealthy. Southern plantation owners were drawn to billiards for a variety of reasons. The table itself made a statement about wealth, and the game required only two people. William Byrd II outfitted Westover, his plantation on the James River, with many diversions, including a billiard table. In 1711 he confided to his diary that “Mr. Mumford and I played at billiards till dinner.... In the afternoon we played at billiards again and I lost two bits.” Byrd also on occasion played with his wife.

Cards. Playing cards, like backgammon, is an old recreation and is known through many parts of the world. By the eve of colonization all European nations had playing cards, often of great beauty. These were standardized into four suits, although different games called for different numbers of playing cards. Card playing came to the New World with the earliest colonists and was recognized as a great seducer of people’s time. The Dutch tried to regulate card playing on the Sabbath. Early Virginia, not usually thought of as being overly restrictive, was faced with so many problems that the government there passed harsh laws against idleness, which included card and dice games. A Massachusetts law directed ordinary citizens to get rid of their playing cards in 1631. William Penn’s “Great Law” of 1682 prohibited playing and placed a fine or five days in jail on all lawbreakers. None of this worked, and by the end of the seventeenth century card playing was a normal part of tavern life everywhere.

Colonial Games. Three colonial card games were whist, euchre, and piquet. Whist, also called whisk, came into its own in the eighteenth century. It is a game of fifty-two cards played by two pairs of partners who try to win tricks; it is an ancestor of modern bridge. Euchre was a French game and possibly came into America through French Louisiana. It uses a thirty-two-card deck, ace through seven. It is also played by four players, two to a team, and has one suit as trump. Piquet was originally a French game that spread to other parts of Europe. It could be played by two people, so it was suitable for home entertainment. Piquet required a deck like euchre. In piquet both sides declare what they hold, thus providing room to lie. William Byrd and his wife, Lucy Parke, played piquet during quiet afternoons or evenings at Westover, but as Byrd recorded in his secret diary, his wife could get annoyed with him when she found him cheating.

A SMALL LOSS

William Byrd II kept a diary in which he recorded his daily activities. As a member of Virginia’s Royal Council he spent some time in the capital, Williamsburg. This entry from Williamsburg is dated 17 April 1712:

After dinner [lunch] I went to Mrs. Whaley’s where I saw my sister Custis and my brother who is just returned. Here we drank some tea till the evening and then I took leave and went to the coffeehouse, where I played at cards and won 40 shillings [£2] but afterwards I played at dice and lost almost £10. This gave me a resolution to play no more at dice and so I went to my lodgings where I said a short prayer and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God Almighty.

An unskilled laborer in Virginia at this time would get ten pounds for ten weeks’ worth of work.

Source: Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, eds., The Great American Gentleman: The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1709–1712 (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963).

Lower-Order Games. All males in colonial America had opportunities to play games and to gamble on their outcome. In the New York City of the 1740s male slaves had the leisure and the wherewithal to play and gamble as whites did. At the alehouse of John Hughson they gambled at cards. As children they played with marbles. They played for pennies, threw dice, and played a game called papa. Taverns catered to slaves and to lower-class

whites, offering them an outlet for competitive urges and a place away from the eyes of masters and spouses.

Sources

Berthold Fernow, The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1976);

Daniel Horsmanden, The New York Conspiracy (Boston: Beacon, 1971);

Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, eds., The Great American Gentleman: The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1709–1712 (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963);

Oswald Jacoby and John R. Crawford, The Backgammon Book (New York: Viking Press, 1970);

J. Thomas Joble, “Sport, Amusements, and Pennsylvania Blue Laws, 1682–1973,” dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1974;

Kym S. Rice, Early American Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1983);

Nancy L. Struna, People of Prowess: Sport, Leisure, and Labor in Early Anglo-America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996).