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Faro Ladies


Gaming in public was not acceptable for women as it was for aristocratic men in 18th century England, who played at social clubs such as the Tory-affiliated White's or the Whig-affiliated Brooks’s. Thus, women gambled in private houses at social gatherings that often provided other, more socially acceptable forms of entertainment, such as musical concerts or amateur theatricals. A group of aristocratic women came to be well known for the faro tables they hosted late into the night. Mrs. Albinia Hobart (later Lady Buckinghamshire), Lady Sarah Archer, Mrs. Sturt, Mrs. Concannon, and Lady Elizabeth Luttrell were common figures in the popular press throughout the 1790s.

Gambling's reputation as a dual personal and social vice, especially female gambling, was not new to the late 18th century.Charles Cotton’s The Compleat Gamester from 1674 was still widely cited during the era. However, in the 1790s the issue took on new importance as Britain, influenced by the chaos of the French Revolution, focused its attention with renewed vigor on any threatening domestic issue that could disrupt social order and political power. Another factor contributing to a new focus on gaming was the increased importance of the middle classes in late eighteenth-century Britain. The middle class, who depended on credit for both livelihood and reputation, were particularly sour toward the vices in which the landed classes indulged, often without serious repercussions. 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 .


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