Keno, a lottery based game said to be of Chinese origin, arrived in the 1860s and soon became the most popular game of chance played in the city. Craps and poker added to these games of chance and both originated in New Orleans. This was so-called high-toned gambling where wealthy planters and ne’er-do-wells won and lost fortunes and murders and suicides were plentiful. The first large-scale gambling house was opened in New Orleans in the late 1820s by opera impresario John Davis, Sr., and the games of chance available, roulette, vingt-et-un, and faro were of European origin. The forms that gambling took were varied.

In consequence, as a gambling city, New Orleans was dubbed the ‘wickedest city in the union’ ( The Semi-Weekly Journal Mar 6 1885.) In 1885 (the year of the Cotton Centennial Exposition), much newspaper correspondence came out of New Orleans, and much of this marvelled at the extent to which gambling ran in the city. Scanland argued that gambling to Orleanians was an ‘inherent mania’ that had ‘existed in some form among them from the foundation of the city, and their speculation in John Law’s “bubble” boom bonds’ ( Freeland Tribune pg 4.) Laws against gambling were passed and repealed, ignored and circumvented and licenses for gambling houses were also periodically issued for large fees.

‘The passion for gambling is deeply seated in our natures,’ wrote one Orleanian journalist ( New Orleans Daily Democrat Sep 10 1877) and J. Throughout the 19 th century New Orleans was famous for its gambling hells and for being the home of gamblers.

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