The Search for “Fraudulent” Playing Cards at the End of the Old Regime

On the morning of 31 July 1780, three employees of the Régie générale, a royal tax collection agency, knocked on the door of a home in the Saint Marcel parish in Paris in search of fraudulent playing cards. They requested entry onto the premises, and asked the residents to show them all the decks of playing cards they had in their possession. The Jacobs told the agents that they had none, and that no one ever played cards in their home. Undeterred, the agents informed them that they would need to inspect every room in the house. In the kitchen, the inspectors found six decks of playing cards, as well as another demi livre of unsorted playing cards. All six decks were composed of used cards, presumably selected from the other cards found at the bottom of the chest.

Between 1779 and 1789, versions of this scenario were repeated in Paris and its surroundings at least one hundred times. More than half the time, the fine levied totaled 24 livres or less, a sum that on the surface hardly seems to justify the effort involved, or the resentment it undoubtedly generated among people like the Jacobs. Why would the royal government go to such great lengths to prevent French men and women from amusing themselves with reconstituted decks of used playing cards? And why did the government label the reconstituted decks of cards “fraudulent?” The presence of these cards and the existence of the inspections designed to curtail their use offers an interesting perspective on relations between the royal government and the king’s subjects towards the end of the Old Regime.