Convict gaming tokens

1819–48

These bone, ceramic and wooden gaming tokens were found by archaeologists at the Hyde Park Barracks beneath the floors, and appear to have been hand-carved by convicts from rubbish scraps and animal bones saved from their meals. Gambling with coins was common among convicts, but how were these gaming tokens used? Perhaps they were counters for chess, draughts, Nine Men’s Morris or tic-tac-toe, or another sort of game where these pieces represented individual players. Maybe they were tokens used in swindler’s sleight-of-hand tricks such as the shell game, or in pitch-and-toss games where the counters stood in for pennies. Gambling was banned at the Barracks and punishable by a stint in the solitary confinement cells, but still seems to have been a popular pastime. In the convict ‘flash’ slang language, the term cleaned out referred to a gambler who lost the money he staked in the game.

I made a sweep one night of eight or nine pounds which was staked … but I have been told they often played for twenty pounds … the game was up the minute they saw me, and they cut into their hammocks, then they put out the light, and I had to look sharp and depend upon my own.

Deputy Superintendent Timothy Lane, Select Committee on Security of Life and Property, 1844