I could give numerous cases similar to the above, did space permit, but this committee did good work, and the fruit of its labours may be found in 3 and 4 Gul. IV. c. 103, "An Act to Regulate the Labour of Children and Young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom," which received the Royal Assent on August 29, 1833. Subsequent legislation has vastly improved upon this Act, and the little workers are now so protected as to make it difficult to add anything for their benefit. One of the great vices of the age was gambling. Not so much on the turf, as at present, nor had gambling in stocks become a science, as now; but dice and cards were rampant, and might be indulged in, from the lordly club to the silver hell. They were as difficult to get at as similar institutions are in the present day, when they are cropping up again as badly as ever. The most aristocratic of these "hells" was "Crockford's" or, familiarly, "Crockey's," in St. James's Street. It was so called from its proprietor William Crockford, who formerly kept a small fishmonger's shop adjoining Temple Bar. In some manner he made some money, either on the turf or by gambling at cards; he set up a gaming house on a most extensive scale, on the site now occupied by the Devonshire Club, No. 50, St. James's Street. Gronow, "Celebrities of London and Paris," 1865, p. 103, gives as good an account of this famous club as any one. He says-- "In the reign of George IV. a new star rose upon the horizon, in the person of Mr. William Crockford; and the old-fashioned games of macao and lansquenet gave place to the all-devouring thirst for the game of hazard. Crockey, when still a young man, had relinquished the peaceful trade of a fishmonger for a share in a "hell," where with his partner Gye he managed to win, after a sitting of twenty-four hours, the enormous sum of £100,000 from Lords Thanet and Granville, Mr. Ball Hughes, and two other gentlemen whose names I do not remember. With this capital, added to his former gains, he built the well-known palace in St. James's Street, where a club was established and play organized on a scale of magnificence and liberality hitherto unknown in Europe. "One may safely say, without exaggeration, that Crockford won the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation. As is often the case at Lord's Cricket Ground, the great match of the gentlemen of England against the professional players was won by the latter. It was a very hollow thing; and, in a few years, £1,200,000 were swept away by the fortunate fishmonger. He did not, however, die worth more than a sixth part of this vast sum;[12] the difference being swallowed up in various unlucky speculations. [Footnote 12: His personal property was sworn under £200,000, but his real estate amounted to £150,000 more.]