CROCKFORD AND CROCKFORD'S. "One who did build his faith so nice Upon the argument of dice, By th' infallibility of deuce ace." FEW men have held a more notorious position in the world, that is to say, in Fashion's world, the world of the metropolis, than the individual whose name forms the subject of our present biographical memoir. Mr. Crockford was (to make free with the comprehensive phraseology of a leading journalist) " a great fact," the personification of a ruling passion, or propensity, pervading, in greater or less degree, all classes of society. He was "learned in the turf, and practised in the dice," the Croesus of the great community of gamesters, the Rothschild of the betting-ring; and it is questionable whether his distinguished prototype of London's eastern hemisphere possessed greater influence in the money market than Crockford had, and exercised, in the immediate region of the sporting world, in which he may be said to have "lived, moved, and had his being." He was a perfect illustration of the proverb, "He plays well that wins;" in him the predicate was fully and practically demonstrated: his gains were enormous, for they were the beneficial results of events, occurring with almost mathematical precision and undeviating accuracy through a lengthened period of time, and governed by the most wealthy and powerful influences. His coffers were an ocean, into which were continually flowing the tributary streams of minor and less experienced capitalists. The tide of success was with him from a very early period of life's voyage, until its termination. The fickleness of Fortune, so descanted on by poets and moralists of all ages, was known to him only by proverbial report; for he basked in the sunny locality of her smiles, and felt the substantial influence of her favours, with little variation, up to the period of his life's dissolution. The death of this extraordinary man (for such he must be considered, regard being had to his original low position in society, and the accidental circumstances that occasioned, and gave impetus to, his long, uninterrupted, and successful career; his immense accumulation of wealth, and the modes by which such wealth was amassed,) created, as may be conceived, an unusual sensation in the sporting circles, and the public have still a desire to learn something more of his life than has yet been presented to them through the medium of the daily and weekly press. The present sketch may be relied on as coming from an authentic source; it will be found to embrace the leading characteristics of the man, and to point, with faithful narration, to the most remarkable of those eventful speculations in which he was engaged, and the fortunate results of which elevated him to place and standing amongst the most opulent of the day. Mr. Crockford was born in the year 1775: his father was a fishmonger, in a very humble way of business in the immediate neighbourhood of the Strand, and died while his son William (the subject of our Memoir) was a mere youth; his widow continuing the business. On the decease of his father, the boy William was necessarily forced into the more active scenes of business: he attended the fish-markets, and in due time became acquainted with the arcana of trade, in its principle of wholesale purchase and retail traffic: a knowledge which, being practically well applied, preserved the patronage of friends, increased custom and business, and secured comfortable support to his widowed mother. Years brought with them the usual intimacies and associations; acquaintances were formed within his own immediate sphere, and amongst such were persons of sporting habit and character, frequenters of the betting houses and the gaming-table. To such places he was in due time introduced, and thus early imbibed the propensity for play and venture which characterized his whole subsequent career. The fascinations and excitement of the hazard-table worked their powerful influence on his mind, and soon brought him within the sphere of operation as a principal actor. His means were limited, but to the extent thereof he would frequently speculate. His tone of play increased with the opportunities occurring to indulge therein; and it is a known fact, that, under the potent charm and fluctuating events of the game, he has, on more than one occasion, not only endangered, but absolutely lost the whole of the capital set apart for the morrow's market, an occurrence that may well be believed to have taken place under severe mortification occasioned by loss, and hope, however fruitless it may have been, of recovery; but, be the fact as it may, the misfortune never affected the stability of his mother's credit in business. It must be remarked of Mr. Crockford, that, even in the period of his novitiate, unlike most youthful gamblers, he was no rash or intemperate player, and, at the period alluded to, seemed to possess an intuitive knowledge of all the subtle and advantageous points of the game; and, what was still more remarkable in a young hand, he exhibited generally a steady and determined patience to wait the advent of particular events, in preference to the less certain and less beneficial mode of indiscriminate speculation. Night after night was he to be seen, regular as the hour, at the place of rendezvous, setting the castor, taking on the nick, the doublets, and the imperial plan, and receiving deposits to return large amounts (but considerably short of the real calculated odds) on all the remote and complicated chances of the dice ;-matters of simple account, which, strange to say, the majority of players, even at the present day, are wholly unacquainted with, or too indolent to think of, and by reason of which ignorance a fine field of advantage and profit is open to the more knowing and vigilant, of which number was Crockford, and apt as thought to avail himself of any and every opportunity of benefit. For some years he steadily pursued fortune in a small way, under such careful and systematic course of play; but in progress of time, as means increased, he extended his sphere of action and entered more deeply into the spirit of speculation. He became a proficient at cards, and was more particularly skilled in the games of whist, piquet, and cribbage; he frequented the better kind of sporting-houses in the neighbourhood of St. James's Market, where the latter game, more especially, was much played, and for large sums, by opulent tradesmen and others. With one person of this class, a wealthy butcher, a most inveterate lover of the game, and having repute for a skilful know ledge of it, Mr. Crockford would contend for days and nights in succession; and from this opponent, and his party, who invariably backed him, Mr. Crockford ultimately won a very considerable sum, which gave spirit and impetus to future venture. The foolish and improvident butcher is said to have been subsequently taken in hand, and slaughtered, after the most refined and improved fashion, by the late notorious Lord B-—, who skinned him of every shilling. He died in a state of the most abject poverty, and under all the torment of bitter reminiscences of his past imprudence. About this period Mr. Crockford entered also into the speculations of the Turf. He was no "bastard to the time," but " smacked of observation," and had attentively noted the practice, and acquainted himself with the system of betting adopted by men who had the repute of experience in such matters, and who appeared to be in thriving condition; and having first matured his understanding, and quietly tested his own capability in the matter, he resolved to try the practical good of the lessons he had learned. The leadng men of the fraternity of Legs were doing good and profitable business in the ring by the system of book-making, or betting round, as it is termed, against every horse in the race,— a system at that time unknown, or at least unpractised, by gentlemen betters, and confined exclusively to the class of professional adventurers alluded to, and of which fraternity Crockford, thus qualified, soon became a prominent and influential member. The state of the turf and betting-ring was, in reference to its general character, much more healthy, and free from knavish and fraudulent practices, at that time than at the present; greater confidence existed, engagement was more strictly observed, and higher and more refined notions of honour prevailed; trainers, jockeys, bankrupts, and defaulters, linen-drapers, broken-down gaming-house keepers, oyster venders, discharged valets, flash flunkies, et hoc genus omne, were not then, as now, admitted to immediate fellowship and association with the patrons and magnates of the turf. The unassuming gentleman and well-intentioned man were not then, as now, compelled to give place to every ignorant and insolent braggart who, with a betting-book, a fair proportion of brass and stentorian lungs (his sole stock-in-trade), could strut his way twice a-week to Tattersall's, and there unblushingly offer his bets in thousands; nor were the transactions of the race-course characterised by such wholesale frauds and palpable robberies as have recently been brought to light, through the extreme vigilance and unceasing perseverance of Lord G. Bentinck, whose successful endeavours have been proudly and most deservingly rewarded by the highest and most substantial marks of public approval. Great facilities were, nevertheless, afforded to the Leg fraternity, or professionals, by reason that the system was engrossed by the few, and encouraged by the many. The time was opportune for calculating heads, and Crockford failed not to step in at the harvest. The immediate scene and locality of Crockford's nocturnal adventures was at a small house in Oxenden Street, at which there was an English hazard-table, (the French game was then unknown,) around which, about midnight, nightly congregated, from all quarters of the town, a crowd of speculative persons, of all ages, from the unbearded stripling to the hoary-headed roué, and of varied condition, from the seedy swell to the pink of fashion. The house opened its doors to all classes, without restriction; and at times the table presented a most motley group, all intent upon the one great object of gain, but pursuing it by very opposite courses of speculation. At this Saturnalian board was to be seen, with unerring regularity, the cool, calculating, imperturbable fishmonger, steadily following one procrastinated but certain profitable system, his mind wholly uninfluenced by fanciful probability or imaginative result; here, too, he would ingeniously turn to account another subtle move in his experienced system, by putting down a large note of one or two hundred' pounds value, to answer the small and comparatively insignificant stake of his opponent, who, in the event of his winning, was necessarily obliged to keep account from time to time of the transactions between the parties. Out of such system of account-keeping (so numerous and variable are the events and proportional bets of the game of hazard) young players would frequently run into erroneous calculations as to the balance due on the termination of the hand; and as the inaptitude of the accountant as frequently told against himself as against his adversary, it followed, that, when such was the case, he paid the full penalty of this miscalculation; while, on the other hand, if he exceeded in demand what was really and absolutely due to him, he was very speedily called, by his wily opponent, to the correction of his account. This mystifying mode of playing on score was a great game with Crockford, and there seldom passed a night in the course of which he did not realise considerable sums from this source of certainty. Young adventurers were captivated by the display of a note of large amount, and, while hope had eye to its ultimate possession, prudent attention to matter of immediate interest and correct account was wholly lost sight of. As time moved on, gaming-houses multiplied; many establishments of superior kind and attractive character sprung up in Pall Mall, St. James's Street, and their immediate vicinity. Rouge-ctnoir was the all-absorbing and fashionable game of the day; and such was the mania for an acquaintance with it, so numerous were the players, and so successful the results to the bankers, or proprietors of the tables, that suddenly emerging, as it were, from obscurity, they adopted a style of splendour and extravagance wholly irreconcilable with their former means and position, and beyond all capability even of moderate fortune; mansions, mistresses, and equipages were common to them all, such a mine of wealth had been sprung by the introduction of rouge-et-noir. Amongst the establishments which had thus recently started into existence, was one in King Street, St. James's; with the proprietors of this house the ever-observant Crockford, attracted by the large profits which he had daily witnessed to result to the bankers from the sources of the game, (for, be it remembered, that Crockford was not the man to act on pecuniary speculation, or any other or better experience than his own,) sought to become a partner, and, by great perseverance, he succeeded in his object. The advantages arising from the immense play that was carried on at this, the most public and best-frequented house of its kind, yielded to the proprietors, in the short space of a few years, a very ample fortune. The number of visitors, the large sums risked (the stakes varying in amount from five shillings to one hundred pounds), and the almost invariable equalization of money, depending on each event between the colours, gave to the bankers the certain continually accruing profit of one and a quarter per cent. (not a per-centage per annum, be it understood, but that rate per cent. per minute, or time occupied by each deciding coup!); an advantage which the capital of the Bank of England could not successfully oppose, nor the mathematical skill of a Newton or Demoivre defeat; and one by which the proprietors realised an enormous amount of gain beyond the large and extravagant outlay and expenses of their establishment. In these gains Mr. Crockford largely participated, and from such source arose his first position of moderate independence. Connected with the history of this establishment, some very remarkable anecdotes are extant-melancholy enough in relation, but not perhaps uninteresting nor out of place as connected with the subject of this memoir. One in particular will strongly illustrate to what mad and wicked extremes the blind avarice and over-grasping disposition of men will sometimes lead them. The transaction here related, though conceived in absolute folly, and attended in its practice by danger of the worst consequences, actually took place, and created at the time a most violent feeling of indignation against the firm. Amongst the frequenters and principal patrons of the house, were many persons of large means and desperate spirit for play. One of the most formidable of the class was the celebrated Colonel A-, of whom it is notorious, that, having lost one fortune at the gaming-table, he went out to India, realised a second, and returned to England in all the enjoyment of wealth, but with his mind unfreed from its original fatal propensity. This gentleman was a constant visitor, and played for very large amounts. The colonel had been for some days and nights (for play went on at the house diurnally and nocturnally with few hours of intermission only) playing with unusual success, and as he was a bold and somewhat experienced adventurer, and not given to merciful consideration of the bank's resources under any favourable opportunity of their transfer and conversion to his own funds, the result was that he took Fortune in her mood, and won a very considerable sum; and the continuation of luck appearing to threaten further heavy loss, the proprietors became alarmed, particularly the more active and ostensible partner, who was a man of most avaricious mould, and whose narrow soul sunk within him at the sad reverses of the bank. Impatient for the recovery of this but small lost portion of his previous immense gains, he concocted a scheme of the most palpable and barefaced fraud for their recovery; and calculating on the colonel's attendance about the usual hour of commencing the evening's play, he caused to be planted or mixed the six packs of cards (the number used in the game) in arrangement for the first deal, so that there should happen in the course of such deal eleven events of trente et un après!-results that would speedily have relieved the colonel and whole company of assembled players of their capital, however large the amount, as on the occurrence of each trente et un après (the pull or advantage of the banker) the bank derives a clear profit of one-half of the whole money staked on the two colours. The infamous plot did not, however, succeed against the particular in |