The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 18, 1898, Page 16

P THE SAN FRANCISCO CALY, FRIDAY, MARCH 1S, 189S. : E WHERE WOMEN GAMBLE Poolrcoms That Are Run for the Convenience of the Fair Sex. There They May Bet to Their Heart’s Co or Prize-Fights. nte liewi T the other day there were at least sixty or seventy women seated in the rows of chairs, walking about, talking fever- ishly or scanning the bulletin board which stands on the mantle-shelf. There isn’t a happy face among therm. all. Yes—just one. A thin-faced, eager eyed woman has just made a_ ‘long shot.” Just as I enter she is gleefully exhibiting a $5 piece. “I put 25 cents on . Bonnibel,” she crows like a withered old child. “Look at that!” And her glee is as painful to witness as the despair written in_nearly every other face in the room. For she is an | exception, though only for to-day. Of all those who spoke to me and to whom 1 spoke—for no introddection is neces- sary at the poolrooms—there was not | one who did not bewail her luck. “It’s the same old story,” a neat, wiry | little woman said to me. ‘“Lose—lose— lose. And when we lose, we play to get it back again. And when we win, we're never satisfied.” It's the doleful dirge of the gambler. In the corner the pool-seller sits; a | 1arge, smooth-shaven man, his brown | derby hat on the back of his close- cropped, fair head, a cigar between his mobile, big-lipped mouth, his vest open £o that he may be perfectly at his ease. The women cluster about his desk like greedy, foolish flies. The poorer ones bet twenty-five cents. The more reck- | less pass over to this man’s custody fifty cents or a dollar, sometimes as much as two and a half on one race on 1t on Horses | itferent horses. 1. It surprising to note the tone of fa- | milfarity between the women who bet and the man who takes their bets. They laugh and joke together in a grim way, discussing technically the details of the race and the merits of the horses, but ever coming back to the topic of their ternoon watching and waiting, nodded losses and his gains. Are you aware, Mr. Head-of-the- [ House, that there are at least four pool ' their hearse-like black-feathered hats | Wait said the sweetest-faced, me. sk oo o and bonnets in corroboration. They | White-haired old wuman, who sat in rooms patronized exclusively by women | j, koq like a lot of woful witches |the corner of one of the smaller rooms mourning over their wretched fate. | 3ut will they stop gambling? Yes, | when every pool room in town is closed | and no one will bet for them. And then they'll betake themselves to one | racetrack or the other and da capo; | over and over again the foolish, piti- ful tale of the weak battling against the strong, of the idiotic self-confidence | and the unchangeable conceited stupid- | ity of the woman who expects to suc- | ceed where others have failed, wWho re- lies upon luck, tips or merely on her | cwn superstitious egotism to make her | a winner in the old, old game where thousands before her have been lost. You'd be inclined to laugh—and to cry. too—at the simplicity of these lambs. They turn to the man who takes their bets and they plead with | him for a “tip.” They ask each new | comer. They turn to each other and | the blind lead the blind over the rocky road to bankruptcy these women are | traveling. | At the Vendome there is a long, large room filled with women from 1 till 6 every afternoon. When I went there in San Francisco? Do you know that if your wife or | vour sister, your daughter even, or—| yes, your mother, imprcbable as it may seem, wishes to bet on the races, her opportunity most conveniently at| hand? is She may take her choice; at Crowley | KEEPING TAB ON I THEBETS —where, there being fewer women, con- versation is more unconstrained—“wait till T can get back from you what yvou've got from me. If I win two hun- dred some day, will you pay it to me?” “Yes. .Or five hundred,” the little good-natured man answered. ‘“We pay rig Well,” she said sighing while me- chanically she plaited together the torn end of her glove-finger, “it'd take all of | that to make up to me what I have lost here.” But as a rule the poolrooms are any- The | women sit through the whole afternoon. They make their bets and then relapse linto dull, feverish waiting. If any | woman speaks with the least intona- tion in her voice of confidence or hope, the woman beside her will open her purse, walk up to_the desk and make another bet—merely because she can- not resist the thought that her neigh- bor might possibly be informed as to the probable result of the race. There is no ‘“tip” so absurd, no source of in- formation so feeble, no prophecy so un- likely to be fulfilled that will not be swallowed by these open-mouthed, greedy fish. Think of sitting for five long, weary hours in rooms so packed with women that one gasps and smothers and sick- ens for breath. There are no horses to s there is not even the small gratification that so many women en- joy of being among a crowd of pleas- ure-seekers. The delight of blue sky and fresh air is not for them. Of all the relying on chance, of all the forms of wagering this is the unloveliest, the most sordid. There isn’t a pretense of sport about it. There isn't the smallest use of one’s wit or one's skill. It's the dreariest, the dolefullest, the most distasteful. These women sit in a sort of dull enchantment. They bet and then their senses hibernate till the tall, cynical, white-bearded man opens the door. _Then there is an ex- pectant hush. He utters a word, the name of the winning horse, and as he walks toward the desk in the corner he speaks the name of a second and a third, which are almost drowned in the murmur and buzz of the disappointed tongues which echo his. For one who has won there are twenty who have lost. Even the wo- man who ‘“played Bonnibel” has lost | thing but a place for merriment. & Ragget’s, in the Hotel Vendome, on | the corner of Market and Turk streets; | farris', at the Sausalito House, 110 street; at Purdy’s, on Ellis, too, | e further down; or at Cohen’s, at | vde, 361 Geary street. | All these places have been called into | being by the craving of the women of | cisco for the excitement there is in uncertainty, for the possible gain | there is in betting on the races. They sustained solely by women'’s And that that patronage | provides a lucrative return for mei small amount of money invested, no| one who has seen the crowds of women | who frequent these places will doubt. | patronage. What kind of women? All Kkinds. | There isn’t a type missing. There are | women of 70 and girls of 17. There are | women in sealskins and shabby, pov- | erty-stricken women; women who are | spending oney earned most shame- fully and women who have scrubbed and washed and swept and drudged in other people’s houses for their pittance. There are representatives from all grades of society. There are refined, sweet voices, and also those. strident | accents that are not out of place in | such surroundings. There are well-ed- ucated women there, and those whose | sentences are fluent only when they are expressing themselves in the jargon of the race track. But there is one thing that they have in commen—that desperate, greedy, grasping eye, that longing for gain, that mercenary, shameless spirit that | counts no loss of respect, that recog- nizes no humiliation, that ignores ev- erything but the money that pours into the booker's hands so generously and out again—so rarely, so slowly. San Francisco’s women have gone | mad. They are drunk with the pros- pect of getting something for nothing. They are fooled and derided and in-! sulted, and they know it not. They are | wrecking their homes, embezzling money put in their charge by husbands, | who would be the first to indignantly | deny what is so carefully kept from | them. They are cheated by the men | who place their money for them, they say, and vet they endure it. They go into places where they would be ashamed to go under any other circum- stances. They are unconsclous of, or they are indifferent to the comments made upon them by those who watch them daily. They are blind, deaf to ev- erything but the nlthy dollar to be made by sacrifices for which nv amount of dollars can compensate. “It's like opium—or drink,” sighed a wan-faced woman yesterday who had sat all the afternoon in Cohen’s dingy back room. “We can't stop it That's what it is. Do you know of any XKeeley cure for betting on the races? I'd take it, no matter what it costs. T'd be better off, even if it'd take my last dollar to get strength to quit. Once you bet on the races and youwll never quit. Mark what I tell you.” And the women who sat around, their faces weary, haggard, after long af-| two of the five dollars she made on that unique wager of hers. Her face is pitiful and horrible now to see. It was smooth before, but now the lines ap- | pear in it and she ages before one’s very eyes; her poor old face grows pet- ulant and peevish and her feverishly bright eyes wink hard to keep the tears back. But the Irish woman—the Irish wo- man with a voice like a grenadier! She sits well up toward the pool seller’s desk and she plays like a veteran. No repining from her, no weak wailing at fate. She takes her gains and losses alike, smiling grimly and betting with a persistence worthy of better things. That great, tall, scraggy Irish woman is the one oasis in the Vendome des- ert. When she has time—when all the bets on a race are in and one may re- lax—she enters into facetious conver- sation with the pool seller, pelting him with her crude, labored sarcasm, while he smiles back lazily at her, and in his heavy way returns the verbal blows from between his shut teeth, which hold tightly the cigar he continually smokes. At the Sausalito where Mr. Heeney sits over in a corner in a front bay- windowed room the scene is much the same. The room js much smaller and very crowded. There is no bulletin board with the results of the races in- scribed thereon publicly displayed. But you bet here, madam, as you do else- where. While women sit around gos- siping ever about the jockeys, the horses, the races, past or to come, you march up to the desk, and, hke the incurabie lunatic you are, you wager 25 cents or 50 cents or $1 that this horse or that will arrive first or second or third. And the result of your marvelous insight into the future is inscribed upon a card —a card which the poolseller keeps, for he wants no record of his unlawful bar- gain with you left as a telltale in your hands. The man marks down the name of the horse you choose, together with the amount of your bet and your in- Mrs. Jones. But as a2 rule one woman speaks to the other t “What do you like, M And Mre.—s—s doesn’'t wait or want to hear her name. e unbosoms her- self promptly of all the information she does (not) possess, and in nine cases out of ten the mere mention of her own choice is enough to set Mrs. bting as to the vet, which she’ll change and take back if she's allowed to. But your name isn't this reckless way. A think you are unknow Oh, if you knew idead, silly, deceived v spoken aloud in nd you actually hat an ostrich- yman you are! ing yourself that you are where no ac- quaintance of yours can possibly come. You fancy you are cngaging surrepti- tiously in a little, slicit excitement, profitable, you hope. You expect to come once again, perhays. But you come day after day and week after week, and are stranded when the end of the racing season comes. The po- liceman who watches you enter, the men who know that dcor which bears a sign about transient lodgings, the very bootblacks on the street smile and sneer at you. ‘“There’s that old fool, Mrs. X—, again! She thinks she’s got a sure thing this time,” said one man to another respectable Jooking, neat little old body in black crossed Ellis street and disappeared into Purdy’s. Poor Mrs. X—! so preoccuplied with the valuable infor- mation she thought she possessed that she didn’t have to try to appear uncon- scious. Why, even the reporters, madam, strangers to you, know your name and all the pitiful, terrible circumstances of your life. INCIDENTS IN THE POOLROOMS. itials—which means initials that are| And she’s there to see how the sixth not yours. For you are a coward, |race turns out. As to the children and madam, as well as a lunatic, and you | the dinner, they're both spoilt, no are desperately afrail of belng recog- | doubt. nized. Some there sre whose names| FPurdy’s is a pool room, pure and are well known. These the poolseller | Simple. It doesn’t pretend to be any- himself addresses as Mrs. Smith or | thing else. It isn't up a flight of dingy “Fie, for shame! Fie, for shame! Ev- | erybody knows your name You go on in your limited, litlle way, flatter- She scuttled along, | It would give you a terrible | shock, wouldn't it, to read that you had | embezzled $2000 of your husband’s mon- ey; taken it out of the bank and lost it gambling, and now, you silly, pitiful criminal, you hope to make up the sum by betting on the races. And you lose daily; you lose, as though there were some malign influence bent upon your fle’structiom What will be the end of it? ¥ “My husband would kill me if he knew I was here. He'd think 1 was | erazy,” you said. Remember? And you, madam, at the present rate when will you join your husband at Klondike? While he is enduring all the hardships of that awful country where the jce flend guards the gold of the north, you are “playing the races” in | Your desperate effcrts to earn enough | | to go to him." And you lose, lose, lose. | | If you need medicine, you don't dare to | come here before you have bought it, knowing that you’ll never stop betting till your purse is empty. And you, No. 3, whose husband sends from Mexico the monthly sum his sav- | ing provides for you. What do you do with it? It goes into one pool room or the other. And you live, as best you can, peddling, sewing, half-beg- ging, anything, until remittance day comes around again. And you, No. 4. You earn your dollar and a half a day by the hardest, the most menial work. From 8 in the morning until 6 at night you must spend cleaning windows, scrubbing floors, putting other women’s homes to rights. And that dollar and a half?| You were not so fortunate as to be employed yesterday. So the Poor pen- | nies you had earned the day before you | squandered on betting in the pool rooms the next. Oh, you poor, ignor- ant, hard-working, foolish old body! There's No. 5 who sits watching the | betting in a_miserable torment. “I know I ought to go home,” she says weakly. ‘“The children are home from school by this time. And I'll have to get dinner, and 2 stairs in a back room of some lodging | house. It is divided off from the main room, which only men frequent, by a | partition, and a screen protects the women who bet from too curious eyes. | | Here, though, one must bet at least| | 50 cents. There's a young woman with | a cap on her head and gum in her | mouth to take your money. She’s a capable little creature. “Miss Lou,” the women call her, speaking of her with a sort of affection, almost. If you must bet, madam, and some unhappy hitch in the law prevents the closing, and what’s more to the pur- pose, the keeping closed of these pool rooms, go to Purdy’s. For one thing, | yow'll mot be beginning a career of de- ceit by pretending to pe anything but | what you are—a gambler: a miserable, mercenary, greedy wretch, whose vice | 1s of all vices. the meanest, the most contemptible. at Sausalito yesterday afternoon from heart failure. erable real estate in Sausalito, and has made that place his home for some time past. the old gentleman was watching and directing the work. heard to exelaim, “Oh, my God!” and he fell to the floor, dead. His daugh- ter, in an adjoining room, heard his exclamation, and rushed to his assist- ance, but life had passed away. the senior partner of the firm bearing his name. been in delicate health, and sought the where he was well known, taking considerable interest in the town's af- fairs. DEATH OF T. J. BASS. T. J. Bass of the Bass, Hueter Company of San Francisco died suddenly Mr. Bass has consid- A painter was at work touching up the interfor of Mr. Bass’ house, and Suddenly he was ars old, and accumulated quite a fortune as He has for some months of Sausalito, Mr. Bass was about 65 y rest and seclusion He owns a number of buildings there. Mr. Bass leaves a widow, two daughters and a son. Z;CHANGE OF VENUE REFUSED. | As to your getting the worst of the | bargain, even when Fate has turned | her fickle face your way, I have onlx your word for it, Mesdames of the Pool | Rooms. | | “When the odds are big, they won't take our bets,” says one. “I bet a dolfar on Linstock for show. | And when 1 went to collect, he said | 1I'd bet for place,” moans another. | | “Why didn't you ask him to show you | | your ticket?” | 7 “I aid, and he said, ‘Oh, I can’t keep track of all your bets. I ain’t got tifne to go back and look through ’em all.’ "’ } | | “I had two to one on the horse I liked and he only gave me fifteen | cents,” complains a third. “Why didn’t you tell him you | wouldn’t stand it?” asked her neighbor. | “Why, he'd tell me to go some place | | else 1£'T gidn’t like it. They know we | can’t maKe no fuss.” | - You can hear this old song in any | number of keys. It's a sort of wretch- ed rondo that runs through the whole. | | There's not a woman, who—justly or unjustly—has not some similar com- plaint to make. At Cohen’s we women were sitting about and the wit of the party—a | pleasant, shrewd-faced woman, was | berating her neighbor for standing “it,” | when a sudden hush feli upon us all | A policeman had entered. One of us fell into a panic. She made for the door and nearly tumbled down stairs in her fright. But the tall, | fair-mustached giant looked about him | good humoredly. | 1 very quiet, aren’t you?” he said. | Oh, it's a spiritual meeting we're | having,” said the wag. “Do you know,” | she went on chuckling, “some women | are afraid of policemen. I can’t see | I just sit here and admire | em. The guardian of the law smiled per- | functorily at this. He took up the bull racing sheet, which was lying on | the table before him, and studied it. | It's almost unbelievable, but a hard- faced, thin little woman looked over at him hopefully, and proffered the same old request for “a tip.” | “What do you like in the fifth?” she whined. The officer laughed shortly. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Seeing to-day’s St. Patrick’s day, you'd ougnt to try Frank Ireland.” A joke? Not to that woman. wasn’t there to joke. “Do you really think so?” she asked | him yearningly. And before he could | answer she left the room, bound for the larger front room, where Cohen's | patrons of the male sex of all ages con- gregate. She came back in a minute quite de- jected. “It's too late,” she said. “He Wouldn’t take any more. D'ye know,” | she said with beautiful simplicity, “it’s | just like him to win now.” |7 “What do you officers come in here | for?” asked a pert young woman who | wore a derby hat and an emplre jacke: | “You can't arrest us. Now, can you The giant locked a bit embarrassed. Then he straightened up. “I just obey orders,” he said. “I'm | told to come in here and report, and | that's just what I do. Just the same,” | he went on, pluckily, “it’s not the place | for you. You've no business coming here, and any one of you'll admit it, if | you stop to think of the rights of it. | "Pain’t no place for women to come and bet in a room like this in a lodging house. Oh, you know 1t ain’t. We know it's a poolroom right enough. But that ain’t no excuse for you. You oughtn’t to come here. And you know | There’s a brave man for you. A man who'll face a lot of women who are disposed to laugh and to sneer at | the law and the decency this man rep- resents—and represents so worthily, | strange to relate. There was more elo- quence in his tone than in_his words. | He dared to be ridiculous. But he was | only admirable. | He walked out after a little. The "pool seller had come in and joined | amiably in the conversation, which | wasn’t of a proselytizing character aft- | er his entrance, of course. “He makes me so ashamed,” whis- pered one woman, pettishly, to another. “He met me once and begged me not to come here. He told me he knew I was respectable and oughtn’t to hang about such places. And so I went to another poolroom,” said the penitent soul “This is the very first time I come back, and in he walks, and I know by the way he locked at me what he thinks. I wonder what he does think!” I wonder. MIRIAM MICHELSON. She RSN EEE RN AR RN RN EERNEENREERRNRRESS: BERBERRERRNR An Insolvent Bartender. ‘Henry A. Madden, a bartender, has filed a petition in insolvency. He owes $558 40, and has no assets. —_—————— It being the intention of J. F. Kennedy, suc- cessor to Morris & Kennedy, art dealers, 21 Post street, to retire from business, he offers | his large stock trrespective of cost. . e L L L L LR ELEEE R Poolroom Case of Richard Creighton | “.1 | The case of Richard Creighton, charged | pe with violating the was called in Jud day afternoon, s to the case going on yesterday after- oon it was agreed to continue the trial 1 afternoon, and the jurors and ses were instructed to be in at- | tendance then. Long also asked that Policeman O'Keefe ubpenaed to be in court, as he be- lieved that the policeman had shown bias ng the jurors according to in- a B: Again Continued. poolroom ordinance, ze Low’s court yester- | in the defendant filed an ing for a change of venu of | Want to Mortgage Church Property. }La‘.‘sg:nd prejudice on the part of the | rne trustees of the Swedish Evangelical Ex-judge Murphy, special prosecutor, | Lutheran Ebenezer Church of San Fran- | objected to a change of venue, as no r son had been given for the alleged bi and prejudice, and besid, a’ s cisco have filed a petition asking for per- | m $7000 mortgage on a plece of property on Mission street, near he Judge W not called upon to decide upon the f: & as the defendant had demanded a jury | Ninth. trial. The Judge refused to grant the | e change, to which Long took the usual ex- | 2 ception. Convicted of Grand Larceny. admitted ong, during the argument, eu £ - & that it was chieu~ owing to the strained | , Fatrick O'Donnell was convicted in relations *between him and Prosecuting | Jud Dun court yesterday on a Attorney Reynolds that he had got his | charge of having stolen $1632) and some client to ask for the change. Some misunderstanding having existed | 12 jewelry from D. McLeod on January 25 T ghnsuuuuuuLLsuRuuLnuILLs ADVERTISEMENTS. ZRRRRBRN yo il 3 s e 8 s e &8 i B 8 g b5 3 8 8 b 8 b s b 8 B 8 8 s 3 8 A A No. 1 Suits, all All manner of good o i Condiily suits—all styles and made—as to trim- mings, stitching and cut—perfect in every detail. Every one fit- ted to each purchaser before being allowed to leave the store. all fabrics—that you paying $15.00 for, are now offered for have been being $10.00. Worth $15.00, but cost you only $10.00 $15.00 Suits genuinely reduced $10.00 We Make No Foolish Claim About these suits. 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