When Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice learns that Mr. Wickham has debts of over a thousand pounds in Brighton, she is aghast. ‘“A gamester!” she cried. “This is wholly unexpected; I had not an idea of it.”’ Those less innocent than Jane, however, would not have been surprised at Wickham's debts. Gambling was a staple pastime of Regency society, and vast fortunes were lost at the gaming tables. The politician Charles Fox owed £140,000. That's around £31 million today. And Mr. Darcy paid Wickham's thousand pounds, amounting to roughly £87,000 now. Only love for Elizabeth could have induced him to do that.

Women gambled too. Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, Charles Fox's friend and supporter, could lose in one evening an amount equivalent to twenty years of income for a gentleman such as Mr. Bennet.

Although gaming was largely illegal, this didn't prevent the gamers. Their punishment was generally in losing enormous sums of money, rather than being arrested, and the Old Bailey records between 1800 and 1830 do not show any prosecutions for gambling. Fraud, however, was a crime, and a gambler might be arrested for cheating.

One example from the Old Bailey in 1812 describes how Samuel Bathcot was cheated out of £10 by  the Wheeler brothers. Samuel was visiting London from Scotland. Walking down Gray’s Inn Lane, he got talking to James Wheeler, who, wouldn't you know it, had also recently been to Scotland and just happened to know the captain of the ship Samuel had sailed in to London. This cosy conversation led them both to the Marquis of Granby public house, where James’s brother joined them. This man said he’d come from Coventry, where he’d been gambling with a group of soldiers. James Wheeler-dealer, who pretended not to know the man, was quick to say how foolish it was to gamble, and then invited the man and Samuel to join him in a game of heads and tails with a halfpenny coin. They played for a guinea, and then James upped the stakes, took the reluctant Samuel’s £10 note and put it on the table. Samuel continues the story:

"He got up, went to the door. I went after him to the door. He told me not to be afraid of my money. He went perhaps ten yards or more from the door. I thought I had been in bad company, and that I should be done out of my money; recollecting that the other man had got the money, I went back to secure him. On my going into the room the other man was gone, and on my return in the street the prisoner [James Wheeler] was gone. I asked in the public-house if they saw that man go out; they said, no."

Samuel reported the crime and, happily for him, James was arrested two days later. Less happily for James, he was found guilty and transported for life. You  can read about the case in detail in the online Proceedings of the Old Bailey, referenced below. 

Gambling in the Regency era took many forms, and cheating at cards features in a story in Crime and Prejudice. The character I chose for this crime is, perhaps, unexpected, but the freedom she gains by having money of her own is life-changing. 
Listen to an extract here.

References

Aspinall, A. C. B. D. (n.d.). Charles James Fox: British politician. In Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-James-Fox

Blakemore, E. (2016). How a gambling duchess changed British politics. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/how-a-gambling-duchess-changed-british-politics/

Fullerton, S. (2004). Jane Austen and crime. Jones Books.

Hatch, D. (2022). Regency wagering. https://donnahatch.com/regency-wagering/

Ledger legends: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. (2019). Barclays. https://home.barclays/news/2019/2/ledger-legends--georgiana--duchess-of-devonshire/

Low, D. A. (1982). Thieves' kitchen: The Regency underworld. J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Old Bailey Proceedings Online. (1812). Trial of James Wheeler (t18121202-116). https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/t18121202-116?text=gambling

Webster, I. (2024). The British pound has lost 99.047% of its value since 1800. https://www.officialdata.org/uk/inflation/1800