Hell and Hazard, or William Crockford versus the Gentlemen of England - Hardcover

Blyth, Henry

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9780297177692: Hell and Hazard, or William Crockford versus the Gentlemen of England

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297177699 ISBN 13: 9780297177692

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969

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Hell and Hazard, the story of William Crockford, founder of Crockford's Club and the father of modern bookmaking, completes Henry Blyth's trilogy on gambling and dissipation in 18th and 19th century England. Crockford, born near Temple Bar in 1775, spent his childhood in squalor. But he had a natural head for figures, and could calculate the odds more accurately and shrewdly than his fellows. His first major coup came when he challenged a local butcher to a marathon game of cribbage, with stakes of a pound a point. At the finish Crockford had won �2000; the butcher was ruined. He opened gambling halls all over London. Then in 1828 he opened Crockford's Club, in the heart of Mayfair. Its members were the cream of Society; its cuisine the best in Europe. Crockford had the vision to understand that vice must be engaged in in luxury. Behind this facade of respectability, Crockford amassed a personal fortune and beggared half the aristocracy of England. There are aristocratic families today who still suffer from losses sustained by their ancestors at the hands of Crockford, who earned the title 'The Father of Hell and Hazard'. The gambling set at Crockford's included the last of the dandies and the Georgian jeunesse doree, and Henry Blyth describes the social backcloth of this era with its foolhardy extravagance and wild living. He analyses its mania for gambling, with its climax in the infamous Derby of 1884, which contained more intrigue, roguery, double-crossing, and deception than any race since that day. The scandal killed Crockford, who died two days later in utmost misery. - With 12 half-tone illustrations.

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