From the Mill to Monte Carlo ― The Working Class Englishman Who Beat the Monaco Casino and Changed Gambling Forever

This is the story of a man who went from Yorkshire mill worker to Monte Carlo millionaire. Joseph Hobson Jagger was not a gentleman or an aristocrat; he was a working class Victorian man who entered the textile mills to work when he was a child. What led a man like this to travel to the entirely alien world of the south of France at a time when most people still lived and died within a few miles of where they were born? The trains that took him to Monte Carlo were relatively new and still dangerous, he did not speak French and he had never before left the north of England. His motivation was strong and desperate. Jagger, his wife and four children, the youngest of whom was only two, faced debtors’ prison, an institution which was brutal and harsh and from which many were never released. His business had failed and the only escape seemed to be a desperate gamble on the roulette tables. Jagger’s legacy is felt in casinos worldwide. The spirit levels on tables and moveable partitions in the wheels that were introduced after he broke the bank make it nearly impossible to win with his methods now, although many still try.

Anne Fletcher is a professional historian.The subject of this biography is her great great uncle Joseph Hobson Jagger. Her search for Jagger’s story started with only a photograph, a key and a newspaper article.