Faro Ladies

[2] At the same time, the middle class's avid consumption of the public information about aristocratic gamblers provided by the press made possible their very notoriety.

Fox, himself a notorious gamester (he in fact ran a faro table in his home from 1780–81), brought the issue of gaming into the popular media's negative portrayal of the aristocracy's involvement in politics.

[6] Justice Ashurst was the first member of the judiciary to speak publicly about the private gambling houses, following George III's "Proclamation Against Vice" of 1792.

He referenced statutes existent since the reign of Henry VIII and encouraged his audience, the Grand Jury of Middlesex county, to be "vigilant in its administration of the law."

Lord Chief Justice Kenyon spoke out on May 7, 1796: If any prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and the parties are justly convicted, whatever may be their rank or station in the country, though they should be the finest ladies in the land, they shall certainly exhibit themselves at the pillory.

Scandalous gossip and news about the aristocracy and royalty became common knowledge to the literate public through newspapers and an increasingly popular art form, caricature prints.

John Ashton's The History of Gambling in England catalogues a series of extracts from The Morning Post and The Times, organs which the public accessed news of these "Faro ladies," as they came to be called in the press.

With the Ladies of PARIS—the moments of improving dissipation are gone by, and a more solid and reasoning character has succeeded to them: but you are in the meridian of what is Ton, Taste, high Play, strict Honor, Faro Tables, Parental Affection, Lottery Insurances, and EXQUISITE SENSIBILITY.

Women gamblers, after having lost their limited personal income (Pin-money), thus without legal or monetary credit to their name, could only wager their sexuality, i.e. their body.

In satirical representations of aristocratic Faro ladies and the writings of moral reformers, prostitution was a common comparison, such as in Isaak Cruikshank's Dividing the Spoil!!

Their sexual unnaturalness was also related to their apparent rejection of domestic duty and intent to exercise power in the public sphere, or at least on its male constituents.

Thus, these respectable characters, without looking to the general consequences of their indiscretion, are thoughtlessly employed in breaking down, as it were, the broad fence which should ever separate two very different sorts of society, and becoming a kind of unnatural link between vice and virtue.

"[22] More subtitles her Strictures on the modern system of female education: "with a view on the principles and conduct prevalent among women of rank and fortune," clearly allotting them responsibility in shaping the behavior of the lower classes via indirect influence.

Speaking specifically of women playing at private Faro tables, Patrick Colquhoun identified a similar problem with upper-class influence in A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis writes: "Evil example, when thus sanctioned by apparent respectability, and by the dazzling blandishment of rank and fashion, is so intoxicating to those who have either suddenly acquired riches, or who are young and inexperienced, that it almost ceases to be a matter of wonder that the fatal propensity to Gaming should become universal; extending itself over all ranks in Society in a degree scarcely to be credited, but by those who will attentively investigate the subject.

The middle class's imitation of "gentility," which was often practiced in the setting of gaming in private houses, began as a self-conscious mode of "commercial interaction," became the "standard of expected behaviour.

"[24] While in reality the middle class made the hospitability and sociality of gaming respectable within their credit-based ethic, the idea of influence and emulation was exploited by anti-gaming moral reformers.

The anti-gaming literature posited that not only did the Faro ladies and their associates' vice undermine them as role models, it also muddled the ideally distinct lines separating classes and sexes.

Accordingly, in some satirical prints, Faro ladies figured through tropes connoting poverty and vulgarity begged viewers to compare them to the poor in order to illustrate a "moral kinship with the lowest classes.

[26] More generally, then, the way in which the Faro ladies gaming created a chorus of reactions from moral reformers, the popular press, and the judiciary speaks to Romantic culture's concern with the demarcation and dissolution of public from private, aristocratic from vulgar, male from female.