THE first licensed, legal casino in Britain is said to have been The Casino Club. opened in Port Talbot, Wales, in 1961. It was the brainchild of entrepreneur George Alfred James, who launched it under the provisions of the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act, which also legalised betting shops throughout the UK.
His grandson, Anthony Miles, said in 2013 that Mr James ‘wanted to give the people in Port Talbot something they had never seen’. The casino’s fine-dining restaurant could seat 400, and an illuminated floor space catered for dancers and cabaret acts. The clientele came from the cities - Swansea and Cardiff - and among their number were some film stars.
The photograph, from 1963 shows three women who were to train as receptionists at Glasgow’s Carntyne Casino: models Maureen McKellar (left) and Margaret Walker (right), and May Reilly, a sales demonstrator.
Other casinos that flourished in Glasgow at that time included The Starlight Rooms, on Gordon Street (‘every evening from 8pm’), which offered roulette, chemin de fer and poker; and The Coronet Club, on Sauchiehall Street, which offered these games as well as bridge and kalooki.
The same edition of the Evening Times that mentioned the receptionists also reported on a court case that stemmed from a police raid on a Gorbals gaming club used for illegal cash-betting transactions.
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