The sports and pastimes of the people of England including the rural and domestic recreations, May games, mummeries, shows, processions, pageants, and pompous spectacles, from the earliest period to the present time / By Joseph Strutt. Illustrated by one hundred and forty engravings.

  • Joseph Strutt
Date:
183l
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sports and pastimes of the people of England including the rural and domestic recreations, May games, mummeries, shows, processions, pageants, and pompous spectacles, from the earliest period to the present time / By Joseph Strutt. Illustrated by one hundred and forty engravings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    XXXVIII—PROHIBITIONS OF SKITTLE-PLAY. In modern times, the penal laws have been multiplied, and much invigorated, in order to restrain the spirit of gambling* and in some measure they have had a salutary effect; but tho evil is so fascinating and so general, that in all probability it will never be totally eradicated from the minds of the people. The frequent repetition and enforcement of the statutes in former times, proves that they were then, as they are now, in- adequate to the suppression of gaming for a long continuance j and, when one pastime was prohibited, another was presently invented to supply its place. I remember, about twenty years back,* the magistrates caused all the skittle-frames in or about the city of London to be taken up, and prohibited the playing at dutch-pins, nine-pins, or in long’ bowling allies, when in many places the game of nine-holes was revived as a substitute, with the new name of Bubble the Justice, because the populace had taken it into their heads to imagine, that the power of the magistrates extended only to the prevention of such pastimes as were specified by name in the public acts, and not to any new species of diversion. XXXIX.—ARCHERY SUCCEEDED BY BOWLING. The general decay of those manly and spirited exercises, which formerly were practised in the vicinity of the metropolis has not arisen from any want of inclination in the people, but from the want of places proper for the purpose: such as in times past had been allotted to them are now covered with buildings, or shut up by enclosures, so that, if it were not for skittles, dutch-pins, four-corners, and the like pastimes, they would have no amusements for the exercise of the body; and these amusements are only to be met with in places belonging to common drinking-houses, for which reason their play is sel- dom productive of much benefit, but more frequently becomes the prelude to drunkenness and debauchery. This evil has > [Before 1801.]
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