1969

For a week in May, the leader of a group of U.S.-based gamblers rented the Villa Casino, which overlooked Hyde Park in West London, along with two craps tables, the latter for $2,500 (about $17,000 today) and 10 percent of the profits.

They offered a gambling trip to England for $960 ($6,500 today) for roundtrip air fare, a week’s hotel accommodations and $960 worth of chips. Such packages, or junkets, to that country had been popular. Travelers paid one amount for airfare, meals and lodging but individually covered all wagers beyond the allotted amount.

The gambling syndicate’s guests, 40 American high rollers, mostly from the Boston, Massachusetts area, flew into town by charter on Monday, May 12.

Suspicious Activity

During the many games of craps the vacationers played, the croupiers, at crucial points, swapped the dice for misspot ones, in this case dice with two sides bearing the same number of spots. One of these dice men was Clayton P. Gatterdam, a 48-year-old ski school proprietor from Fort Worth, Texas. Gatterdam* was a reputed crossroader, a hustler who traveled around, cheating others at gambling for money.

By using crooked dice at the Villa Casino, the operators fleeced the players out of about $26,400 ($181,000 today) over three days! 

Caught Bang To Rights

On Thursday at around 1 a.m., police burst into the pink, cottage-style building and arrested seven of the hosts. They were charged with involvement in the management and organization of unlawful gaming and conspiring to cheat and defraud. Gatterdam was charged also with possession of seven pairs of misspot dice. (Gambling was legal in England at the time, but cheating by those who ran it wasn’t.)

Undercover police agent and gambling expert, Detective Constable Brian Gillard, 26, had infiltrated the Villa Casino crowd and had watched the games for days before requesting the raid. It’s unknown how initially he’d become aware of the shady goings on.

Intended To Swindle

In a preliminary hearing the following Wednesday, the seven arrestees pleaded innocent. The magistrate agreed to bail of 15,000 pounds, or $36,000 ($247,000), apiece provided they give their passports to police and check in with them daily.

“The bail is the highest set in London for some time,” reported the Orlando Sentinel (May 16, 1969).

At their trial in mid-July at Old Bailey, officially called the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, all of the defendants pleaded guilty. They admitted to having conspired between April 1 and May 15 to obtain property belonging to others dishonestly through deception with dice in craps games. They also admitted to being involved in conducting games in such a way that the odds weren’t favorable to all players equally.

Gatterdam was sentenced to three months in prison. The six others were fined $4,800, $6,000 or $7,200 ($33,000, $41,000 or $49,000), for a total of $33,600 ($230,000). All were discharged on the condition they don’t cheat at gambling again in England in the subsequent two years.

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* About 1.5 years earlier, in October 1967, Nevada Gaming Control Board agents caught Gatterdam using misspot dice in craps games while working as a stickman at the Incline Village Casino at Lake Tahoe.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Reggie, left, and Ronnie Kray

1960-1963

Esmeralda’s Barn in London, England initially flourished under the ownership of twin brothers and gangsters, Reggie and Ronnie Kray.

The place to be seen in the West End, famous politicians and celebrities frequented it — such as actress/author Joan Collins, actor George Raft, singer Judy Garland, actress Barbara Windsor, along with painters (and compulsive gamblers) Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. 

Then former boxer William Ives worked the door. Cy Grant was the resident singer. Others who performed at the club included Noel Harrison, Lance Percival, even a young Eric Clapton, who was in the band, Casey Jones & the Engineers, at the time.

Then Reggie went back to prison (he’d gotten out sometime in 1961), leaving Ronnie to run amok at Esmeralda’s. And he did.

Unintentional Sabotage

He began extending credit beyond the house limit and to people for whom it was beyond their means. This left the casino having to cover whatever Ronnie’s thugs couldn’t collect. This new credit policy opposed that of the manager, Laurie O’Leary, who knew that carrying huge losses for too long would put a gambling house out of business.

When the markers amounted to £2,000 in one week [about $5,700 then, $46,000 today], O’Leary mentioned it to Ronnie, who laughed, not understanding the nuances of running a gambling club. Desperate, O’Leary offered the twins £1,000 a week to stay out of the operation. Ronnie, speaking for himself and Reggie, refused.

O’Leary quit and opened a casino of his own, and his wealthy following made his place their new haunt.

“His club was soon what Esmeralda’s Barn would have been — one of the four top gambling clubs in London,” wrote John Pearson in From The Profession of Violence: The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins.

Ronnie hired a different manager but banned him from having any say over credit. With the elite patrons leaving and Ronnie extending credit to almost anyone, the clientele soon became comprised of “playboy gamblers, gambling addicts, chancers and the chronically in debt,” according to Pearson.

“Violence crept in. Several drunken losers at the Barn were thrown down the stairs, and occasionally Ronnie instructed East End villains to call on members he considered ‘cheeky’ about their debts. What happened then was not his business: if somebody was hurt, an empty flat smashed up, this had nothing to do with him.”

The other West End gambling clubs that popped up in the interim also cut into Esmeralda’s decreasing profits. When the second manager tried to discuss the casino’s continuing to lose money, Ronnie told him he worried too much and replaced him with his own uncle, Alf Kray.

The Twins Are So Done

Eventually, Ronnie’s interest in Esmeralda’s waned, and he filled his time with other activities away from the property. When out of prison, Reggie focused primarily on expanding his West End casino protection extortion business. In 1963, the twins permanently left Esmeralda’s Barn, which was in debt and owed back taxes.

Today, the Berkeley Hotel stands where the casino once did.

Sources

Gambling inside the Knightsbridge Sporting Club in London, England in 1965

1976

“Next time try London. The odds are better,” boasted a sign in the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas in 1976. The posting of this ad and possibly others resulted from an agreement between gambling industry representatives in London and Las Vegas to “swap promotions and high roller lists” (Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 15, 1976).

People playing games of chance in Nevada, however, would’ve found doing so in England quite different and vice versa, as many of the rules concerning casinos were diametrical.

Conservative v. Liberal?

Some might argue that England took a more conservative approach to the industry, with tighter restrictions, than Nevada. The U.K. admittedly had adopted more stringent laws in 1968 after a number of unsavory individuals had infiltrated gaming. Those changes led to a large drop in the number of existing casinos.

Nevada, too, had taken steps to gain better control of the industry, for example, forming two regulatory agencies — the Nevada Gaming Control Board (1955) and Nevada Gambling Commission (1959) — and instituting the Black Book (1960).

Here’s a snapshot of the gambling laws of the two jurisdictions in the 1970s.  When you compare them, what do you think?

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* In the 1970s, the one-time gaming membership fee ranged from $15 to $75 (a value of about $65 to $320 today), depending on the casino’s exclusivity.

Sources