Gambling Strangest Moments

By Graham Sharpe

Whether it be one pound on the National Lottery or a million pounds on the turn of a card, the instinct to bet is the same. Over the centuries there have been many strange gamblers – and even more strange gambles – and in this unique collection of punts and punters, Graham Sharpe reveals fearless, flamboyant and fantastic flutters.

Some of the most extraordinary bets include the male gambler who had a boob job to win a big bet; the gambler who set off to walk round the world wearing an iron mask to land a wager; the man who could genuinely dream winners. Sharpe is also haunted by a couple of ghostly gambles, and looks at the betting propensities of US Presidents – including one who gambled away the White House's finest china.

Celebrities who indulge in strange betting practices are unmasked, too – the Marx Brothers, Ben Affleck, James Bond, Kerry Packer, Richard Burton, Oscar Wilde, Professor Stephen Hawking, to name a few. This painstakingly researched, original and unusual offering is an overdue addition to the ever-popular 'Strangest' series – and you can bet on that!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jul 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910232491

Graham Sharpe

Graham Sharpe is 70 years old, without any discernible medical qualifications, other than personal exposure to acne, cartilage & gallbladder removal, oh - and prostate cancer. A journalist by trade, he made a name - of sorts - for himself by spending almost half a century publicising bookmakers William Hill, winning awards along the way, and creating one himself - the world's most prestigious and richest sports-based literary prize, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. For 60+ years a Luton Town and Wealdstone FC fan, 58 of those as a vinyl record collector, in which guise he wrote the well received Oldcastle title, Vinyl Countdown, Graham has been for 46 years married to long-suffering Sheila, been for 40 years a Dad of two, and for 5 years a grandfather. He hopes this is far from his last book...

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I have been in the betting business for the best part of 35 years, but the following extract from a message, which appeared on my email inbox in February 2005, must be the strangest bet request I have (yet) received.

I am the mystic. I see all and know all. I am the ‘Alpha and the Omega’ . . . and I’ll prove it to you.

Here is the situation. I have solved the most baffling and mysterious serial killings in the United States . . . although I’m the only one that knows it! (Jesus told me through a dream!) The FBI has been investigating this case since 1974. The case is called ‘BtK’ (Bind, Torture and Kill). ‘BtK’ has now resurfaced after 20 years and is taunting police.

I know who ‘BtK’ is. I know his complete birthday and his full name . . . something over 20 law enforcement agencies haven’t been able to do in over 30 years of investigations.

I will provide for you, now, his full name and birthday and will bet that the person I name will be the mysterious BtK. This case is the American ‘Jack the Ripper’ and the mystic has solved it. Give me sufficient odds and I will provide you the name and complete date of BtK who will confess within 30 days of the date the bet is placed!

Mind you, there was the letter from a chap in Chelmsford demanding ‘odds-on Adolf Hitler still being alive and that confirmation of him being alive will be confirmed by midnight on 31st December 2005’.

As Media Relations Director for William Hill I receive a considerable number of such requests and will share with you a number of the choicest examples along with a whole variety of other strange moments in this most fascinating and offbeat of businesses. Like the row which broke out in January 2005 in Edmonton, Canada when the local lottery ran a radio commercial backed by music – the Nazi Party’s official anthem! Organisers pleaded ignorance and one commented: ‘It really wasn’t appropriate at all. It was a good tune, though.’

Despite having worked in the gambling industry for so long, I never cease to be surprised at just how alien the concept of gambling as distinct from having a little flutter seems to be to the majority of ‘normal’ people. Out for my weekly long jog around Harrow Weald Common this morning, I stopped for once to read the notice at the entrance to the wooded area.

‘Vagrants, idlers, squatters, gamblers and card-sharpers are excluded’ it said.

There seems to be a feeling that perhaps gambling is somehow infectious, that it can be ‘caught’ by those currently immune to it. If that is the case then the stories in this book may well prove to be the start of an epidemic.

Graham Sharpe, April 2005.

DICING WITH CHEATS – WALKER’S WARNING

LONDON, 1552

An early warning against the cunning wiles of unscrupulous dice and card players appeared over 450 years ago in a pamphlet by Gilbert Walker, entitled ‘A Manifest Detection Of Diceplay’, which hit the Elizabethan streets in 1552 but echoes down the centuries with its cautionary advice against ‘naughty practices’ and gambling cheats who ‘have such a sleight in sorting and shuffling of the cards that play at what game ye will, all is lost before hand’.

A few years later, gamblers were still being duped and another author, Robert Greene, decided to come to their aid in his 1591 work, A Notable Discovery of Cozenage. Described as a ‘soldier, gambler, lover and beggar’, Greene was evidently well acquainted with the subject of which he wrote, and described in some detail the scamming of a gullible dupe, a farmer referred to as ‘The Barnacle’, lured into a tavern and set up to take part in a rigged game of cards with the following, inevitable outcome.

‘The Barnacle’s card comes forth and strikes such a cold humor to his heart that he sits as a man in a trance, not knowing what to do and sighing while his heart is ready to break, thinking on the money that he hath lost.

‘Perhaps the man is very simple and patient, and whatsoever he thinks, for fear goes his way quiet with loss, while the Cony (victim) catchers laugh and divide the spoil.

‘And being out of doors, poor man, goeth to his lodgings with a heavy heart and watery eyes, pensive and sorrowful, but too late, for perhaps the man’s state did depend on that money, and so he, his wife, his children and his family are brought to extreme.’

Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

WICKET WAGERS

KENT, 1646

Cricket, a brand new sport, attracted gambling from its very earliest days. As the respected Daily Telegraph Chronicle of Cricket notes: ‘1646 – First recorded cricket match – at Coxheath in Kent (betting involved).’

The Foreign Post reported in 1697 that ‘thee middle of last week a great match at Cricket was played in Sussex; they were eleven of a side, and they played for fifty guineas apiece’.

The Gentleman’s Magazine complained in 1743 about the advertising of cricket matches that ‘it is a most notorious breach of the laws, as it gives the most open encouragement to gaming – the advertisements most impudently reciting that great sums are laid’.

Maybe the gambling element eventually became over-intrusive, because the Morning Chronicle was raging that ‘This sport has too long been perverted from diversion and innocent pastime to excessive gaming and public dissipation’ in a 1774 article lambasting the state of the game.

In 1705 a game was played at Malling, Kent, between teams from Chatham and West Kent, for eleven guineas per player. In August 1731 ‘many thousands’ turned up at Richmond in Surrey to watch and bet on the outcome of a match between two local sides with 200 guineas at stake – and the hoi polloi was not best pleased when the game was abandoned without a result at 7 p.m. Around this time, ‘violence inspired by disappointed gamblers was a regular feature of cricket in the London area’ says author David Underdown in his Start of Play.

Twenty years later over £20,000 in side bets was said to be riding on a game played at Newmarket for a massive £1,500 per side between Lord March’s XI and a team of Old Etonians. Frustratingly, the result does not seem to have been recorded.

A magistrate was called upon to rule on a cricket gambling dispute in 1748, and he noted, ‘It is a manly game, and not bad in itself, but it is the ill use that is made of it by betting above £10 that is bad and against the law, which ought to be constructed largely to prevent the great mischief of excessive gambling.’

Play was suspended at the Artillery Ground in 1765 when Surrey played Dartford with a reported 12,000 present, because of violence by the mob, ‘many of whom had laid large bets’. Serious injuries were sustained and the game held over until the next day.

Indeed, the very laws of the game in the second half of the eighteenth century included a section headed ‘Betts’ which read, in the 1788 version: ‘If the notches of one player are laid against another, the bett depends on both innings, unless otherwise specified. But if the other party goes in a second time, then the bett must be determined by the numbers on the score.’

The first detailing of a crooked game may be of the 1783 game between Hambledon and Kent that, says David Underdown, ‘certainly sounds suspicious’.

Runs were recorded by notches on a stick then, but the Hambledon scorer, it was said, ‘accidentally’ mislaid his stick when a close-fought game ended in a tie – although the Kent scorer claimed they had won by one run. ‘High odds’ were laid on the game, in which notorious gambler the Duke of Dorset, playing for Kent, ‘missed two easy catches’ but for which, ‘the knowing ones would have been deeply taken in’ according to the Hampshire Chronicle, which said that Hambledon were hot favourites.

Lord’s was frequently rented out for betting matches – such as the one staged in 1793 between Five Gentlemen of the Globe, who scored a total of 2 in their two innings, and the Four Gentlemen of the MCC, who hammered 3 in their first innings to win the 100 guineas stake money.

‘Cricket was very much a betting game,’ confirmed Roy Porter in his English Society in the 18th Century. But ‘by 1800 the London game was being seriously corrupted by professional gamblers’, found David Underdown. Many of these dodgy games were arranged by ‘legs’ or bookies’ runners, who made it their business to infiltrate themselves into the company of the new breed of semi-professional cricketers who would congregate in London’s Oxford Street hostelry, the Green Man and Still.

By the 1820s, though, bookies were barred from Lord’s and some fifty or sixty years later, following riots in Australia – including one in 1878 when England skipper Lord Harris was assaulted by a bookmaker who faced a £1,000 loss if England won the match – they were also banned from grounds there.

A cricket club actually lost its home because of a betting backlash – on 14 August 1876 the landlords of Accrington Cricket Club’s Peel Park ground discovered Accrington’s Dick Roberts playing a single-wicket match against Enfield’s Henry John Ramsbottom for a £10 wager, and promptly evicted the club.

HORSING ABOUT

EN ROUTE TO DOVER, CIRCA 1670

Joe Haynes was a notorious late-seventeenth-century gambling cheat, specialising in card sharping, who travelled with the English ambassador to Rome ‘and there he made use of his skill in gaming, by which he got considerable sums from the cautious Italians’.

But when he was in his late teens, he gambled against a horse. Haynes had been in ‘loose company at a bawdy-house in Whetstone’s Park’ recorded Theophilus Lucas, and he was abducted by ‘a gang of tarpaulins’ who ‘put him aboard a smack, lying at St Catherines’.

Haynes was decided to be of no use to the navy and was ‘put on shoar again. However, his delivery was but leaping out of the frying-pan into the fire; for just as he landed, an office imprest him for the bland service, and clapt him into the Tower.’

Haynes was sent off to march to Dover, there to travel to join the English forces in the Low Countries. Preparing to depart for Dover, ‘the following dialogue pass’d betwixt him and his Captain, who was a Frenchman’:

Joe: Have you got a horse for me, Sir?

Capt: Far vat do you vant one horse?

Joe: To ride upon, Sir.

Capt: Begar, you must go on foot; you be one foot-soldier.

Joe: Indeed I cannot, for I have got the French-Pox upon me.

Capt: De French-Pox, Sirrah! Vere did you get it? Joe: In Dog and Bitch Yard, Sir.

Capt: Vere is dat place?

Joe: In that part of Great-Britain call’d England.

Capt: Begar den you be one lying dog, for dat be one English-Pox.

Joe: Well, Sir, let it be what pox it will, as I am not fit for marching, I will ride.

Capt: Begar you be de sad rogue as e’re me met; but if you must ride, me tell you vat, you shall have one horse, and you shall throw de dice vid him; and if you vin, de horse shall ha’ no vittels, but if de horse vin, you shall go vidout pay for dat day.

Joe: I never, Sir, yet plays at dice with horses, but nevertheless, I don’t much care if I throw a main or two with a horse for once, and not use it.

A horse was brought out, and it was agreed that the higher total thrown would win: ‘a pair of dice was put betwixt the horse’s lips, which falling from thence 6, Joe Haynes takes ’em up and throws 8; whereupon the Captain crying out, Begar you sheat de horse, for dat vas no fair cast; Joe reply’d, I vow it was very fair, ask the horse else.

‘So the horse saying nothing, he went that day and night without any provinder. Next morning, setting out from Dartford for Rochester, the French Captain oblig’d Joe Haynes and the horse to throw dice again for that day’s allowance; but Joe being now the winner too, the Captain swore he should fling no more with the horse, for at that rate it would be starv’d and he should have a horse to pay for.

‘The third day Joe rid to Canterbury, whilst the rest of the recruits went a foot; and the day after arriving safe at Dover, he there gave his officer the slip and came strait up to London.’

BODY AND SOUL

LONDON, 1713

Wealthy women were risking all by gambling in the early eighteenth century, and an article from the Guardian of 29 July 1713 examined some of the consequences involved:

I come to consider all the ill Consequences which Gaming has on the Bodies of our Female Adventurers. It is so ordered that almost everything which corrupts the soul, decays the Body.

The Beauties of the Face and Mind are generally destroyed by the same means. This Consideration should have a particular Weight with the Female World, who were designed to please the Eye and attract the Regards of the other half of the Species.

Now, there is nothing that wears out a fine Face like the Vigils of the Card Table, and those cutting passions which naturally attend them. Hollow Eyes, haggard Looks and pale Complexions are the natural Indications of a Female Gamester.

Her Morning Sleeps are not able to repair her Midnight Watchings. I have known a Woman carried off half dead from Bassette, and have many a time grieved to see a Person of Quality gliding by me, in her Chair, at two a clock in the morning, and looking like a Spectra amidst a flare of Flambeaux. In short, I never knew a thorough paced Female Gamester hold her Beauty two Winters together.

But there is still another Case in which the Body is more endangered than in the former. All Play Debts must be paid in Specie, or by an Equivalent. The Man who plays beyond his income, pawns his Estate; the Woman must find out something else to Mortgage when her Pin Money is gone. The Husband has his Lands to dispose of, the Wife, her Person.

One strongly suspects that there were two meanings of ‘Body’ being alluded to in this delicately stated attack on female gamblers.

By 1898 the prevalence of female gambling was worrying the author of The Gambling World, known only as ‘Rouge et Noir’, who declared in a shocked manner: ‘Until recently, betting was looked upon as a habit confined to the male sex, but now even women indulge in it, as they do in the filthy habit of cigarette smoking.

‘A lady – Miss Kenward of Birmingham – who has long been engaged in endeavouring to raise the status of factory girls in the Midlands, who ought to be in respectable domestic service, has found the betting prevalent amongst them one of the greatest difficulties she has to contend with. One girl in her Sunday school class – what a satire this is on religious teaching! – told her with bravado that she had bet 8 to 1 on a horse, and won two shillings. Tell her, was the message received from another, that any girl in our factory who will not bet is despised.’

THE VERY DEVIL OF A BUSINESS

SWITZERLAND, PRE-1714

The Devil himself intervened in a gambling contest in Switzerland, some three hundred years ago – we know this because the incident was recorded by the splendidly named Theophilus Lucas, Esq., who wrote Memoirs of the Lives, Intrigues, and Comical Adventures of the most Famous Gamesters and Celebrated Sharpers in the Reigns of Charles II., James II., William III., and Queen Anne – a book only marginally longer than its title – in 1714.

Explained Lucas, clearly a wholly believable chronicler of such matters:

Near Bellizona in Switzerland, Three Men were playing at Dice on the Sabbath Day; and one of ’em, call’d Ulrick Schroetus, having lost his Money, and, at last, expecting a good Cast (of the dice), broke out into a most blasphemous Speech, threatening, That if Fortune deceiv’d him then, he would thrust his Dagger into the very body of God, as far as he could.

The cast miscarrying, the Villain drew his Dagger, and threw it against Heaven with all his Strength; when, behold, the Dagger vanish’d, and several Drops of Blood fell upon the table in the midst of them: and the Devil immediately came and carry’d away the blasphemous Wretch, with such a Noise and Stink that the whole City was amaz’d at it. The others, half distracted with Fear, strove to wipe out the Drops of Blood that were upon the Table, but the more they rubb’d ’em the more plainly they appear’d.

The Rumour hereof flying to the City, multitudes of People flock’d to the Place, where they found the Gamesters washing the Board; whom they bound in Chains, and carried towards the Prison; but, as they were upon the way, one of ’em was suddenly struck dead, with such a Number of Lice crawling out of him, as was wonderful and loathsome to behold: And the third was immediately put to Death by the Citizens, to avert the Divine Indignation and Vengence, which seem’d to hang over their heads.

The Table was preserv’d in the Place, and kept as a Monument of the Judgments of God on Blasphemers and Sabbath-breakers; and to show the mischiefs and inconveniences that often attend Gaming.

A couple of hundred years later, the devil’s influence again affected a gambling matter when in 1999, Brazilian mother of seven, Maria Nascimento, burned her £50,000 winning lottery ticket after a church minister said she would go to hell if she took the ‘devil’s money’.

CASANOVA KEEPS IT UP FOR 42 HOURS

VENICE, 1725

Legendary lover Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725, and when he died in 1798 he was to be remembered principally for his numerous conquests of the beautiful women of his day – his memoirs contained detailed accounts of his intimate relations with over a hundred ladies. A lesser-known side to his character is that he ‘used gambling wins to help conquer his mistresses, and the capital of his mistresses to help pay his losses’.

His favourite gambling game was faro and he was also involved in bringing lotteries to France, but his most spectacular and strange moment – albeit a lengthy one – took place in Sulzbach, Germany, when he made the acquaintance of a military man, an officer named d’Entragues, who was a keen piquet player.

They played regularly for a few days, the military man irritating Casanova by invariably standing up and ending the game whenever he found himself ‘ten or twelve louis’ ahead.

Casanova finally taunted the man by refusing to play against him: ‘I play only for my pleasure (he lied) and because the game amuses me, whilst you play merely to win.’ The tactic worked and his opponent’s honour was stung, so, chronicles writer Ralph Nevill, ‘it was agreed that they should resume their contest, but that the player who was the first to rise from the piquet-table should forfeit fifty louis to his opponent. The stakes were five louis a hundred points, ready money only.’ I presume these were significant sums.

They began playing at 3 p.m. one afternoon. At nine d’Entragues proposed supper, but Casanova was not hungry, so they carried on playing. Onlookers who had gathered to watch the showdown went off for supper and returned to see them still going strong as midnight came and went. Eventually the onlookers had all gone and just the two protagonists and a croupier remained as they played through the night.

By 6 a.m. Casanova was a hundred louis down. At 9 a.m. d’Entragues’ lady friend Madame Saxe persuaded them to take their first sustenance of the contest, a cup of chocolate. At this point d’Entragues suggested that ‘whoever asks for food, leaves the room for more than a quarter of an hour, or goes to sleep in his chair shall be deemed the loser’.

By midday the pair were still not prepared to show weakness by eating, but at 4 p.m. accepted soup. By suppertime, with the game into its second day, Madame Saxe called for them to stop and share the stakes but Casanova would have none of it.

D’Entragues was determined not to give in even though by now ‘his appearance had become that of a corpse which had been disinterred’ while Casanova seemed unaffected and declared that he ‘would only give up the struggle by falling down dead’.

Overnight the players again played on alone with d’Entragues clearly suffering. At 9 a.m. Madame Saxe returned and found her lover having difficulty shuffling and counting the cards. She appealed to Casanova, who magnanimously pointed out that the military man could quit and make a profit – but lose the overall bet – which d’Entragues declined to accept. More soup arrived, but d’Entragues actually fainted ‘almost immediately after the cup had been raised to his lips’ and ‘he was carried away to bed’.

Casanova, after giving six louis to the croupier, who had matched both players by staying awake for the 42-hour duration of the game, rose and walked outside to a nearby pharmacy where he ‘purchased a mild emetic’.

He went to bed and slept until 3 p.m. before arising with a ravenous appetite. D’Entragues did not appear until the next day when, to his credit, he told Casanova ‘that he was grateful to him for a lesson which he should remember all the days of his life’.

MARCHING TO GLORY WITH A BALLS UP

NEWMARKET, 1750

The Earl of March (and Ruglen), alias William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry, born at Peebles, Scotland on 16 December 1725, grew up to become one of the greatest gamblers of his era.

He first came to public notice in 1748 when he offered to wager 1,000 guineas that he could produce a four-wheeled carriage pulled by four mounted horses and carrying a man, which could cover nineteen miles in one hour.

This was regarded as a wildly optimistic undertaking, given the state of the roads – and the bulky, heavy conveyances that would have struggled to make this target in twice the time – in those days. The Earl of Eglinton joined March in the bet, which was taken up by Count Taaffe and Andrew Sprowle, Esq.

Having agreed the bet, March set about winning it. He commissioned Wrights of Long Acre to come up with his conveyance, streamlined to resemble a seat strung on leather straps. Cleverly positioned oilcans were placed to provide a stream of lubrication to the brass wheels. Racehorses – three of them winners – were utlilised to pull the contraption, which carried March’s groom.

The event took place on 29 August 1750 at 7 a.m. on a Newmarket Heath course requiring several circuits. The horses sped off to complete the first 4 miles in just 9 minutes, and eventually covered the requisite 19 miles in a mere 53 minutes 27 seconds.

March’s reputation was now established – particularly as he was also making a name as a rider in horse races. That reputation was, though, endangered when a jockey riding on behalf of March in a challenge race, allegedly managed to compete without carrying his allotted weight, only adding it to his kit when the race was won. March’s opponent, an Irish nobleman, demanded satisfaction and called March out for a duel: ‘Have the goodness to bring a friend, a surgeon and a case of pistols with you.’

March duly turned up, but was shocked to see his rival arrive together with a friend carrying a polished oak coffin which boasted on its lid a plate, ‘engraved with his – March’s – own name and title, and the date and year of his demise, which was the actual day, as yet scarcely warm!’ recorded March’s biographer, JR Robinson. March’s nerve was broken and he apologised abjectly to get out of the duel.

March won a 50-guinea bet in 1751 when he successfully gambled that a Mr St Leger would be the first of the two to wed.

Next, March cashed in via a ‘contest with earthly man’s greatest enemy, Time, by which his Lordship sought to attain further éclat’. For ‘a large stake’ against a fellow nobleman, he bet ‘he would cause a letter to be conveyed fifty miles in an hour’.

To accomplish this seeming impossibility, March ‘engaged twenty expert cricketers, famed for their skill in throwing and catching. The letter was enclosed in a cricket ball and on an appointed day the agile cricketers stood in a circle and nimbly threw the ball containing the letter one to another; but their dexterity was so great that, on the stated period elapsing, it was found that the letter had traversed many miles over the allotted distance,’ reported Robinson.

March found himself immortalised by noted novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in his book, The Virginians: ‘My Lord March has not one, but several devils. He loves gambling, he loves horse racing, he loves betting, he loves drinking, he loves eating.’

March took part in a rare match against a fellow nobleman when on 5 May 1757 he won a 50-guinea stake by defeating the Duke of Hamilton at Newmarket in a horse race.

Reverting to his style of offbeat wagers, March next cashed in by backing a London coachbuilder to outpace a renowned runner – March’s man to run while rolling a coach wheel alongside him. The cunning March had a track of planks laid down for his man to run the wheel on, and he duly raced to victory.

A 500-guinea life-or-death bet March made with a Mr Pigot ended up in court. March had nominated Sir William Codrington, Pigot his father – the winner to be the one whose nominee should outlive the other. It transpired that unbeknown to both gamblers, old Pigot had expired on the very morning of the day on which the wager was made.

Pigot the younger claimed this voided the bet, while March asserted that he was the winner. March brought an action in the King’s Bench for the stake money and the jury duly found in his favour.

In 1809, into his 84th year, March struck possibly the oddest wager even he had come up with – ‘five hundred pounds that he would die at a certain hour on a certain actual Saturday – which he lost and paid’.

The end was nigh, though – and one of the world’s great gamblers finally expired on 23 December 1810, having set the standards for the would-be notable wagerers to follow in his footsteps. He was buried in his parish church, St James’s, Piccadilly.

KNOCKOUT PUNT

LONDON, 1750

The Duke of Cumberland bet an astonishing £10,000 on hot favourite Jack Broughton to win his English title fight against outsider Jack Slack. This was the first major gamble on a boxing match and at odds of 1/10 the duke fully expected to land a profit of £1,000 from the bet.

However, Slack got lucky with a flailing attack on Broughton, and the punch he landed between the favourite’s eyes virtually blinded him and effectively ended the contest, which was all over ten minutes later. The duke did not take his financial setback well and set about ruining Broughton, accusing him of throwing the fight and engineering the closure of the amphitheatre from which Broughton derived his living.

Boxing was already suffering from allegations of fixing even in these early days and Slack later confessed to earning more by losing fights than by winning them.

CONNOISSEURS OF BETTING

WHITE’S GAMBLING CLUB, LONDON, 1754

‘The gentlemen who now frequent this place profess a kind of universal scepticism, and as they look on everything as dubious, put the issue upon a wager. There