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Placing Bets

Edmund Keyser’s Central Eating Saloon. Journal. [Philadelphia], 1846-1876. (Courtesy, Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

Edmund Keyser’s Central Eating Saloon. Journal. [Philadelphia], 1846-1876. (Courtesy, Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

“Rat Pit,” Edward H. Savage. Police Recollections; or Boston by Daylight and Gaslight. Boston: John P. Dale & Co., 1873.

“Rat Pit,” Edward H. Savage. Police Recollections; or Boston by Daylight and Gaslight. Boston: John P. Dale & Co., 1873.

This extraordinary “sporting journal” contains records kept by Edmund Keyser, who ran various saloons and a hotel in Philadelphia from the 1850s through the 1870s. In addition to accounts of prize fights, entries include the odds and results of horse races at tracks in Philadelphia (Hunting Park and Point Breeze) and farther away, in St. Louis, Louisville, Nashville, New Orleans, and Providence. The book is open to pages showing the outcomes of contests between dogs over which one could kill the most rats (depicted in the accompanying illustration). Like the Saloon Keepers Companion, it too was most likely used as a reference book for those wishing to check past performance before placing bets on future races, or to settle bar bets. Keyser’s accounting skills served him well. He was worth about $5,000 in 1860, and for a short time collected taxes for the relatively new Internal Revenue Service.
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