host of linkboys, coachmen, chairmen, drawers to assist, with common-bail affidavit men, ruffians, bravos, and assassins for any odd job that might turn up requiring physical strength. As the years passed the vice grew in magnitude. Large fortunes were made by the proprietors of gaming-houses, thanks to the methodized employment of capital, embarked regularly as in any other trading establishment, the invention of E. O. tables, and the introduction of the “foreign games of roulet and rouge et noir. Little short of a million must have been amassed in this way,”[148] individuals having acquired from £10,000 to £100,000 a-piece. The number of establishments daily multiplied. They were mounted regardless of expense. Open house [Illustration: FARO’S DAUGHTERS.] was kept, and luxurious dinners laid for all comers. Merchants and bankers’ clerks entrusted with large sums were especially encouraged to attend. The cost of entertainment in one house alone was £8000 for eight months, while the total expenditure on all as much as £150,000 a year. The gambling-house keepers, often prize-fighters originally, or partners admitted for their skill in card-sharping or cogging dice, possessed such ample funds that they laughed at legal prosecutions. Witnesses were suborned, officers of justice bribed, informers intimidated. Armed ruffians and bludgeon men were employed to barricade the houses and resist the civil power. Private competed with public hells. 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,” and probably originated 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.”