Although serious betting was primarily a man's activity, more than a few women incurred heavy gambling losses, both during the Regency itself and earlier, during the Georgian era. For instance, Lady Bessborough, nee Cavendish, managed, with the help of her sister, to accumulate a debt of over thirty thousand pounds. Sums like these sound huge even today, but they are in fact astronomical in light of what a British pound could buy during the Regency. The average male servant earned only about twenty to sixty pounds a year at that time. A year's worth of coal to heat a large house cost fifty pounds. An income of two thousand pounds was considered quite comfortable, allowing people to maintain a large house, keep horses and a carriage, and employ eleven servants. These numbers do much to put a gambling loss of thirty thousand pounds in perspective.
With the dawn of Victorian morality, betting on the huge scale seen during the Regency declined. Life in general settled down considerably after Prinny's daughter Victoria ascended to the throne. By the 1840s, the gambling fever of Regency England had passed.
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