No. 784
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 08, 2024

Gambling for a Child.

A variety actor stakes his last treasures against $85 in cash.
December 8, 2024
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The Merry Wives of Boston. | Photography as an Aid to Divorce.

Gambling for a Child.

No-Dudes A few days ago, a band of cowboys arrived in Fort Collins, Col. About the time the boys dropped into town, there also landed there a fresh young dude from the East, who gave his name as Clarence De Puy. Clarry, as the cow-puncers called the dude, wore a shiny silk hat. This, one of the rangers knocked from its owner’s head to the ground. The gang then amused themselves by firing bullets through it until it resembled a sieve. Clarry left town on the next outgoing train, bareheaded.

 


National Police Gazette, December 29, 1890.

Gambling-for-Child

A remarkable story of a drunken variety actor's desperation in gambling has obtained currency within a few days because of the prominence which the miscreant's wife has of late been given in the pictorial and daily newspaper press. There is no necessity of going into the unpleasant details further than is necessary to illustrate the depravity which an appetite for liquor and a passion for gambling can inspire. The actor in question, a member of the variety profession, in a game in New York had "played in" all his money and available resources, and, under the influence of liquor, proposed to put it his wife, a noted variety stage beauty, against $60 in money. His five-year-old child was added to the stake to make the amount at issue $85 a side. The facts are given with entire accuracy. A father whom many members of the theatrical profession can readily call by name played his wife and child against $85 and lost, The wife went Into the custody of a new lord and master, and she could not, though she shed tears at the time, have greatly regretted to escape from a brute who could tragic her like a dog or a piece of furniture or clothing which he might take to a pawnbroker's. She has made a success in life on her account, and she may well, in the experience of the adulation and financial ease which she now enjoys, look back with a shudder on the night when she and her child were part of the stakes in a gambling house, made so by her own husband, the father of her child,


Illustrated Police News, April 30, 1881.