A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (40 page)

Preface

On July 17, 1856, a terrible train crash claimed the lives of 60 passengers in Pennsylvania. In Madrid the same day, a bloody battle between the National Guard and Royal troops left bodies strewn in the streets. And in St James’s Street, London, Mr F. Cavendish bet Mr H. Brownrigg that he wouldn’t kill the fly that was bothering him before he went to bed.

The bluebottle met its match. We know that thanks to the scuffed-up, defaced old betting book at White’s gentlemen’s club. ‘Recd, HB’, it says, beneath the record of the wager.

When they weren’t dining lavishly or dozing flatulently in armchairs, they liked a flutter at White’s. Actually, that’s an understatement. Once, when a passer-by was brought in having collapsed in the street outside, the assorted aristocrats laid odds on whether he’d live or die. On another occasion, Lord Cobham bet a Mr Nugent that he could spit in Lord Bristol’s hat without repercussions. Lord Alvanley, an inveterate gambler who came into a fortune and applied himself to getting rid of it as speedily as possible, reputedly bet on a race between two rain drops down the club’s window. The stake? £3,000, roughly 300 times the annual earnings of a general servant.

The terms were dutifully recorded in the book, which was published in 1892. Some of the wagers are born of the kind of disputes that could be settled in moments today on the internet. Squabbles about the correct wording of a French phrase, for instance, or whether an obscure general was alive or dead. Many of the rest were predictions; on politics, high society or the justice system. Would Lord Derby’s government survive the new year? Would the Duchesse de Montpensier have a child before her sister? Would the prince of poisoners William Palmer swing for his crimes? Would Baron de Vidil be sentenced to hard labour for horse-whipping his son? Idle bets, of the idle rich.

But while gambling was rife among the upper classes, society took a dimmer view of the masses joining in. ‘There can be no doubt that the vice of gambling is on the increase amongst the English working-classes’, tutted James Greenwood in
The Seven Curses of London
in 1869, pointing to the spiralling numbers of sports papers published in the capital as proof.

The government made a couple of spirited attempts to stamp it all out, but to little ultimate effect. And as the decades passed, and Victorians refined the art of free time, there were so many new things to bet upon: football matches, cricket tests, rugby games …

Alternatively, you could simply make up your own challenge. In Brixton Deverill, in Wiltshire, in 1883, two farmers had a bet to see who could eat the most hard-boiled eggs. After they had scoffed 28 each, the battle was abandoned. No winner, then, but it’s safe to say the village nightsoil man was the loser.

A Foolish Election Wager

Anderson (Indiana), Monday: An unfortunate election enthusiast here will probably die in consequence of a foolish bet. He wagered that if Mr Cleveland carried the State he would swallow a live turtle, and he has honestly done so, the specimen being small but lively. Now it refuses to digest, or even to die, and is causing the man frightful agony besides. The doctors are trying to dislodge or kill it, but without success.

The Western Mail
, Cardiff, November 15, 1892

Killed by Cigarettes

As the result of an attempt to see how many cigarettes he could smoke in half an hour to win a wager, a fourteen year old lad named Elwell, of Chicago, has just met with his death.

It appears from the
New York Tribune
that a number of newsboys were talking of cigarette smoking, and one of the crowd urged Elwell to see how many he could smoke in half an hour. A small wager was made, and two packets of cigarettes were purchased. The lad was taken sick during the night and he died in the morning.

The Loughborough Herald and North Leicestershire Gazette
, September 3, 1896

A Peculiar Bet

A Lyons boatman, named Aymard, has just won a considerable sum of money. He bet he would descend the Saone from Thoissey to Lyons on a piece of ice floating down the river.

He embarked at Thoissey last Sunday evening on a sheet of ice four metres long by three metres broad, and took a portable stove and the materials to make pancakes, which was one of the stipulations of the wager.

On Tuesday morning he reached Lyons safely. While passing under the bridges he attached the pancakes he had made to strings which were let down to him by the cheering crowd.

He landed at the appointed spot, and received quite an ovation, while his ice craft continued floating down the river, carrying the tricolour flag he had planted on it.

The Blackburn Standard and Weekly Express
, February 28, 1891

Extraordinary Wager by a Boy

On Tuesday a boy named John Magee, aged 16, was admitted to the Cardiff Infirmary under most singular circumstances.

It appears that while playing with other lads Magee undertook, for a small wager, to swallow fifty-three marbles. He succeeded, and apparently suffered no discomfort. His friends, however, became alarmed on hearing of the affair, and escorted him to the infirmary, where he was detained, seemingly none the worse for his extraordinary feat. Yesterday the medical staff succeeded in extracting forty-three of the marbles.

The Western Daily Press
, Bristol, November 12, 1891

In the Lions’ Cage

A High Wycombe resident has attained to the distinction of a hero by reason of a curious wager into which he entered on the closing night of the town’s Michaelmas fair.

He volunteered to enter a cage of forest bred lions which formed part of a travelling circus, smoke a cigar, and drink a bottle of champagne to the health of his Wycombe friends.

The eventful hour arrived, and with the greatest nonchalance, the hero entered the cage and performed his feat, gaining the applause of the townspeople assembled. No one else could be found who would follow his example.

The Yorkshire Telegraph and Star
, Sheffield, September 28, 1899