Faro game in progress, 1800s

1832-1860

Elijah Skaggs, nè Eli Harrison Skaggs (1818-1890) stands out in U.S. gambling history. He was one of the country’s cleverest card tricksters and a hugely successful gambler. More significantly, he created a franchise system for the business of crooked faro.

“He probably had more to do with the spread of gambling in this country than any other one man,” wrote Herbert Asbury, author of Sucker’s Progress.

Soaking It All Up

After leaving the Skaggs family farm in Kentucky, the young man visited several of the country’s gambling centers in the mid-Atlantic states. During these stops, he learned all of the intricacies of dealing faro, cleanly and crookedly. When he witnessed a new trick, the student compelled the dealer to show him how it was done, paying significant sums for the information if necessary.

“He was greatly impressed by the popularity of faro, by the opportunities it offered for chicanery, by the fact that the deal remained always in the hands of the man who ran the game, and by the expedition with which the artists emptied the pockets of the local sports,” Asbury wrote.

The Business Model

Beginning in the early 1830s, Skaggs made New Orleans his business headquarters. There, he recruited young men in gambling halls to help him build a gambling empire. The mastermind trained them extensively, paid their expenses and supplied money for their bank.

Once they became proficient, the gambling visionary sent pairs of them to different towns to ply their craft together, supervised by one of his many cousins. Skaggs gave each of his proteges 25 percent of the profits from their individual operation.

“If luck ran against them and they somehow lost their bankroll, they returned to Skaggs for replenishment and reassignment,” wrote Roll the Bones author David G. Schwartz.

Eventually, other professional gamblers called Skaggs’ practicing pupils “patent-dealers.” They came to be considered fraudsters at the gambling table.

Additional Ventures

As for other industry-related investments, Skaggs financed gambling houses in New Orleans and helped one of his brothers set up a gambling enterprise in California. He funded inventors who had a new idea for faro chicanery in exchange for being able to use their innovation exclusively for a year before they commercialized it. Consequently, Skaggs played a role in the development of some of the crooked faro dealing boxes that hit the market in the 1830s and 1840s.

His Business Attire

Skaggs himself was called “Brother Skaggs, the preaching faro dealer” because of his zeal for the card game and because of his regular attire, a uniform for gamblers of the period. He donned a white high standing-collared shirt and cravat, the color of which contrasted his black silk vest, trousers, frock coat, stovepipe hat and patent leather gaiters.

“These somber garments covered a long, gaunt and awkward frame and emphasized a sour and saturnine physiognomy,” described Asbury.

Prosperity For All

The ambitious entrepreneur kept the franchise alive for nearly two decades. At one time, Skaggs had about 100 of these gamblers scattered throughout the States. Business boomed.

“Skaggs’ patent-dealers prospered exceedingly, and the money rolled like an avalanche into the pockets of the Master in New Orleans,” Asbury wrote.

Through his massive gambling enterprise, other business interests and investments, the Kentuckian had become a millionaire.

Winding Down

He dissolved his gambling franchise and retired from the industry at age 40 in 1858. Afterward, he settled down on the Louisiana cotton plantation he’d purchased years earlier.

Little information is available about how he spent the remaining roughly 30 years of his life. He may have returned to working in the gambling industry at some point.

Reportedly, Skaggs lost about $3 million he’d invested in Confederate money and bonds, which became worthless after the Civil War.

The gambling maverick died at age 72 in Texas in 1890.

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1953

On a weeknight in May, Louisiana state policemen surrounded a high-end home in the New Orleans suburbs. One of them knocked on a secret side door that contained a one-way glass window, allowing those inside to see out but not those outside to see in. A man in the house opened the door but slammed it shut once he realized who was there. Using sledgehammers, the troopers penetrated that and another door and entered.

Inside, they saw that much of the residence had been converted into an illegal casino. The living room, dining room and a third, smaller room all contained gambling equipment. A cocktail bar in the basement served guests.

Scattered throughout these areas were about 40 to 50 people, several of whom fled upon seeing the authorities. Three even jumped out of a window.

Operating Clandestinely

In the 1920s, parimutuel horse race betting became the only legalized form of gambling in Louisiana, although many casinos operated out in the open anyway, unlawfully, and this went on for decades. However, many of those enterprises went underground after Senator Estes Kefauver and his fellow committee members, in New Orleans in 1951, held hearings on organized crime. Following that probe, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Frank J. Clancy closed the area’s gambling houses.

One of those shuttered illegal clubs was O’Dwyer’s,* which had been owned and operated by brothers George L. and Rudolph “Rudy” T. O’Dwyer. Previously, the duo had run gambling establishments in New Orleans.

The home where the raid took place belonged to George’s son, Edward L. O’Dwyer.

Too Much Stress?

When she saw the police activity, Edward’s aunt and next-door neighbor telephoned her brother, George, and told him what was happening at his son’s home.

Immediately, George jumped in his car and sped to the scene. While pulling into his sister’s driveway, he suffered a heart attack and died on the spot!

Netting A Jackpot

Meanwhile, from the various gaming rooms in Edward’s home, troopers seized three roulette and three blackjack tables, $1,300 in cash (about $12,000 today) from various strongboxes and four loaded revolvers discovered in a cabinet.

“[It was] the most gambling equipment we’ve gotten on any raid,” Col. Francis Grevemberg said of the haul (The Monroe News-Star, May 27, 1953)

The state policemen released all the players but arrested the five operators, none of whom was an O’Dwyer, on illegal gambling charges. It’s unknown what happened to these men subsequently.

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* O’Dwyer’s, open from 1949 to 1951, was located at 100 Jefferson Highway, New Orleans. It’s now a Salvation Army store.

Sources

1951

Chief Warrant Officer Marcus Gordon Oliver, paymaster at the U.S. Naval Station Treasure Island, complained of feeling ill and left work early on Friday, April 13.

The following Monday and Tuesday, he didn’t show up at the San Francisco office and hadn’t phoned. Co-workers called his home in Berkeley and got no answer. Oliver, 44, and his wife, Pollyanna, 34, a civilian clerk in a Navy pay office in San Francisco, seemed to be missing.

Upon learning this, Navy personnel immediately opened Oliver’s job safe and discovered the $29,000 ($275,000 today) he’d signed for and was supposed to disburse for payroll was gone. A search for the man who’d been in the Navy 27 years began immediately.  

Spending Spree Reconstructed

Within four days, Oliver was found in a hotel room in New Orleans, Louisiana, returned to San Francisco and charged with embezzlement and misuse of $29,000 in government funds.

During his federal court trial on April 22, a parade of witnesses — racetrack parimutuel clerks, casino workers and hotel staff members — testified to seeing Oliver patronize their businesses, gamble and spend money. Those included the Bay Meadows Racetrack in San Mateo, California and casinos in Reno, Nevada. For instance, Thomas J. Hill, a casino worker at Reno’s Mapes hotel-casino, said he saw Oliver bet an unopened package of $200 ($1,900 today) in $2 bills on a single dice roll.

Contrarily, a defense witness, Leonard Faust, a Navy chief petty officer, also at Treasure Island, said he’d seen Oliver, earlier in the month, win big on two different occasions when betting on horse races at Bay Meadows —$9,000 on one, $6,000 on the other.

Accountability: Opposing Views

Oliver claimed he’d experienced a seven-day blackout and denied taking or using any of the Navy’s money. He insisted the $15,000 ($142,000 today) he’d spent during his “missed time” was his own, cash he previously had won ($9,000 and $6,000) at Bay Meadows.

Nevertheless, the judge deemed him guilty and sentenced him to three years in federal prison.

Sources