Documents indicate that roulette appeared in the 18th century. As with many games, the first mentions are provided in legal documents banning the game. A mention appeared in the regulations for the new country of “New France”, later renamed Canada. The decree, dated 1758, specifically prohibits playing “dice, hoca, faro and roulette”. English Law 18 Geo. He provides the first mention of the word in 1745: “And while certain pernicious games called Roulette or Roly-Poly are played daily… No place should be used to play these roulette or Roly-Poly games”.
The first mention of EO appeared almost at the same time ”“ in 1750. Interestingly, Strutt in 1801 mentions both EO and “Roulette” but the “current EO tables” are only briefly. cited and it is clear that this is a well known game while “Roulette” is only cited from a previous law and Strutt, who we know was familiar with games in England, incorrectly deduced that it was a card game. A sports magazine from the same period (1808) designated “Roulette” as a “foreign game”. This author deduces that roulette disappeared or that it became very rare in England at the beginning of the 19th century and that it was indeed replaced by the EO for a time. However in the middle of the 19th century,
What is Roly Poly?
The very first mention in the OED of one of these games appears in 1713 when Arbuthnot John Bull writes: “Let’s start with entertaining: what do you think of a Rouly-Pouly or a country dance? “But this hypothesis must be ruled out because Arbuthnot was Scottish and the 1894 edition of the Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable tells us that” in parts of Scotland the nine-pins game was also called rouly-pouly. “
The first real mention therefore dates from 1730 in a letter from the Countess of Suffolk: “The Duchess of Marlborough decides to lose her money at roly-poly. »Mention which does not provide us with any information on the rules of the game.
A book entitled “The Fatal Effects of Gambling”, dated 1824, has a section entitled “Description of the newly introduced game of Roulette or Roly Poly” (Description of the recent game of roulette or Roly -Poly), implying that it is one and the same game.
But in “Amusements of old London Vol.1” Boulton says the EO “originated from the mainland” ¦ “At the time whist was becoming popular” – he previously said this happened around 1742 and added “the Roly Poly, as the game was commonly called” ¦ ”. If it is true that Roly Poly and EO were one and the same game, then EO could claim to be the ancestor of roulette but the appearance of Roly Poly at this time seems to contradict the fact that it This was a well-known game in 1730 and therefore the credibility of this claim seems uncertain.
This author therefore concludes that it is more likely that Roulette arrived in England from France at the beginning of the 18th century when it was initially called Roly Poly. After its ban in 1745, the similar game of EO seemed to circumvent these laws, and roulette / Roly Poly had all but disappeared by 1800, having been effectively replaced by EO.But EO in turn disappeared in favor of a resurgent roulette in 1875.