Anonymous - A Gentleman of London

The Tricks of the Town Laid Open OR A Companion for Country Gentlemen

1747. Reprinted in Tricks of the Town; being Reprints of Three Eighteenth Century Tracts. Ralph Straus. Chapman & Hall, 1927.

Bowling is a game for diversion, recreation and exercise...and was formerly a game for few but gentlemen, as that was; but as men and things are generally grown worse and worse, so is this too, and strangely degenerated from an innocent, inoffensive diversion to be a perfect trade, a kind of set calling and occupation for cheats and sharpers...If you please therefore we'll make a short trip to Marybone (for that's the chief place of rendezvous) the bowling greens having there in these latter years gained a kind of preheminence and reputation above the rest, and thither most of the noblemen and gentlemen about the town, that affect that sort of recreation, generally resort.

The tract was written in the form of a series of letters 'from a Gentleman of London to his Friend in the Country, to disswade him from coming to town...' This is from Letter X.

I have seen a hundred at a time at least following one block, and the greatest part of them, five to one, I'm confident, rooks and sharpers...They bet nothing but gold here, so that a man must have a good stock that pretends to embark with them...Marybone, as I told you, is the chief place about town, but for all its greatness and preheminence, it lies under shrewd suspicion of being guilty of sharping and crimping as well as the rest.