Original Contributions

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From the Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald 22/03/1856

Tammas Turnip on Gambling
Chapter XIII

I have always looked on games and gamblers among men as mean and unworthy. All attempts to throw a glory round the gambler, or advocate the innocence of his pastime I despise. However mildly he may smile in the face of his rival, be he peer or pauper, down goes the dignity of common humanity in the shout of victorious triumph, or the idiotic laugh of the victor. The long drawn design of the draught-player tends to discover his neighbour's weakness a long way off. A seeming generous action is done; to lead astray, one man is given so that two may be taken. The spirit of over-reach grows and ripens itself in every action of a gambler's life, and he knows it not.
I once lived in the outskirts of a town famous for its commercial importance. A club of manufacturers met, in the fine summer mornings, before commencing business, to have a game at quoits, in a small enclosure within my hearing of their remarks. It struck me how like the talk of the schoolboy their remarks appeared, as how a shot should be played, and the joy or sorrow after it was played. So far from being manly did they who were thus engaged seem, I could not help thinking that the growth of mind gets stunted in gamblers. Paul says beautifully, "When I became a man I put away childish things". It was humbling to listen to this club of good fellows giving vent to expressions of joy, disappointment, hope, fear, froth, and folly. The aid of a spirit lamp was often called in to steady the nerves of those who had tasted too strong the night before. A meridian club was formed. They met and had a taste, then separated till evening, when a card club wound up the proceedings, and it was often morning before they sought, not their homes, but the place where their home should have been. This club, to a man, flourished in the bankrupt list. A number of them were sent to Irvine to the sea-bathing. There was a place set apart for such gentlemen; it stands in the middle of the street, with the stair facing Kilmarnock, as if put down for the convenience of that place. While "Brither Davie" was a magistrate in Irvine, a Kilmarnock worthy was mentioning how many things they had in advance of Irvine. Among other things, speaking of the gas-light, he kindly said they would send down a pipe to Irvine to their benighted streets. "O yes," said Davie, you might do waur [worse] than send down a light to the foot o' the Jail stair, it would let your ain townsfolk see to go up." While in Irvine in 1833, I used to call often in the evenings and see the unfortunate inmates of the "stone frigate," as the jail is termed. If a man is bad before being put in, he is worse after. Every one settles his own case with his creditors, seeing that his own family is not to be hurt by the transaction. Games are a sort of pastime in the debtors' castle—cards, dice, draughts, pitching pennies on the table, fiddling, dancing, and every sort of care-killing exercise was resorted to. A glass of whisky was relished, but the good old jailor dare not allow it to pass in. " Don't let me see it, sir, or I'll take it from you," he would say, seemingly angry. "Go down to John Wallace's, at the stair foot, and be sure to hide it from me when you take it in." I have seen the old man put seven glass in his mouth in an evening, with his eyes shut, keeping true to his trust that he dare not see it in the place. However merry the prisoners looked while passing an hour with them, whenever their acquaintances rose to leave them, there was a feeling of melancholy stole over their faces in spite of themselves. I asked the old jailor one night how long he had held office. "If I be spared till March, it will be seventeen years," he replied. "And how many lodgers may you have had in that time?" "If they go on as they are doing just now, I think by March I will have had seven thousand!! It wants five months of the time. O yes, I have had a great number of decent lads here with me; indeed the most of them have been from your own place. I never got so much incivility from the whole put together as I did from yon snub-nosed dwarf that came in with you one day. I had him here a good while, and as true as I tell you, I thought sometimes of strangling him. I think I would have done the country a service, and it would have been entitled to put up a monument for me, not for killing a man, but for extirpating vermin; but, if ever the wretch comes into my charge again, I do assure you I will rid the country of him." Such was old Langlands' account of his lodgers.
The gambler's nature becomes vitiated, by hoping for what he has no right to—a windfall or a fortune, by tossing, pitching, or shuffling cards, wagering and worrying by every unnatural movement. It is the way to beggary, and they who tread in it are unhealthy in thought, word, and deed. Young men have plenty of outlets for their inventive genius, at leisure hours, without stooping to fraud or inventive robbery. I know no quality of deceit by which a young man will be sooner overthrown than by gambling. It soothes him in acts of pilfering, poaching, lying, and all sorts of subtlety unworthy of trust. Add to it smoking and drinking, and the best conditioned young man will soon become a finished fool.