Word: crockford
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Rejected Crown. The biggest and most elegant new casino is named Crockford's, and in tradition and atmosphere it does not recall "Monte" so much as the pre-Victorian London of rip-roaring Regency bloods. In its heyday, Crockford's was the acknowledged heaven of gambling hells. Benjamin Disraeli, who had to wait six years before being elected to membership in 1840, likened its original building in St. James's to "Versailles in the days of the Grand Monarch.'' It was a favorite haunt of politicians, and the Duke of Wellington instinctively repaired to Crockford...
...aristocracy matched wits and wagers, betting on everything from the Derby to the seduction of a duchess. Crocky's, as it was called, was also known affectionately as The New Pandemonium and. less fondly, as the Fishmonger's, after the original profession of its founder. William Crockford, who made a fortune of some $6,000,000-or what one historian described as "the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation." The club was closed by the 1845 law prohibiting chemmy and almost all other forms of card playing for stakes. After almost a century...
Filing-Cabinet Frenchies. After passage of the new gaming act. Crockford's was bought by an Old Harrovian entrepreneur, blond, beefy Tim Holland. 35, who brags of learning bridge when he was nine. He transformed the club's venerable second floor with $80,000 worth of silk damask wall coverings and 18th century candelabra, imported eight French croupiers and French-made plastic chips representing $1,500,000 (highest chip: $2,800) for four chemmy and eight poker tables. In return for a cut of the take. Businessman Holland persuaded foxy old Isidor Abbecassis. Le Touquet's casino...
...free breakfast with champagne, more than 1,200 top-drawer Britons have joined the club, which Tim Holland modestly calls a "gold mine." Last week, after his casino had been running only ten days. Crocky's new master had already earned the Biblical encomium pinned on Fishmonger Crockford in the 19th century: "He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he. hath sent empty away...
...reading Crockford's last week, Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "Most unfair and unseemly." Speculated a high churchman: "Whoever the author is, he belongs to the militant low church. [Moreover], no high dignitary, whatever his views . . . would express himself in so petulant a manner or make petty references to shades of purple . . . These definitely rule out anyone of importance."* Said the Church of England Newspaper (low church) : "Whoever the writer may be, he is a man distinguished by incisiveness of thought and accuracy in the use of language...