Great ladies of fashion, holding their heads high in the social world, made their drawing-rooms into gambling-places, into which young men of means were enticed and despoiled. This was called "pidgeoning," probably the first use of the expression. The most noted female gamesters were Lady Buckinghamshire, Lady Archer, Lady Mount Edgecombe, a trio who had earned for themselves the soubriquet of "Faro's Daughters." Their conduct came under severe reprehension of Lord Kenyon, who, in summing up a gambling case, warned them that if they came before him in connection with gambling transactions, "though they should be the first ladies of the land," they should certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory. This well-merited threat was reproduced in various caricatures of the day, under such heads as, "Ladies of Elevated Rank;" "Faro's Daughters, Beware!" "Discipline _à la_ Kenyon." The Government itself was in a measure responsible for the diffusion of the passion for gambling. The pernicious custom of public lotteries practically legalized this baneful vice. State lotteries began in the reign of Elizabeth, and existed down to 1826. They brought in a considerable revenue, but they did infinite mischief by developing the rage for speculation, which extended to the whole community. The rich could purchase whole tickets, or "great goes;" for the more impecunious the tickets were sub-divided into "little goes." Those who had no tickets at all could still gamble at the lottery insurance offices by backing any particular number to win. The demoralization was widespread. It reached a climax in the South Sea Bubble, when thousands and thousands were first decoyed, then cruelly deceived and beggared. But lotteries lingered on till the Government at length awoke to the degradation of obtaining an income from such a source. While crime thus stalked rampant through the land, the law was nearly powerless to grapple and check it. It had practically but one method of repression—the wholesale removal of convicted offenders to another world. Prevention as we understand it had not yet been invented. The metropolis, with its ill-paved, dimly lighted streets, was without police protection beyond that afforded by a few feeble watchmen, the sorely tried and often nearly useless "Charlies." The administration of justice was defective; the justices had not sufficient powers; they were frequently "as regardless of the law as ignorant of it," or else were defied by pettifoggers and people with money in their pockets. A mob of chair-men or servants, or a gang of thieves, were almost too big for the civil authority to repress; and the civil power generally, according to Fielding, was in a lethargic state.