sweat-cloth

sweat-cloth (plural sweat-cloths)

1. A canvas cloth placed under a horse’s saddle.
2. A gambling game played with three dice and a staking-layout drawn on a sweat-cloth, or the equipment for this game.
   • 1810 (February 14), “American Intelligence”, Maryland Gazette, page 3:

     A Nicholas Creerly, has, in a Bucks county (Penn.) paper, in the uſual way, warned the public not to truſt his wife on his account, charging her with having deſtroyed his property, &c. His wife, in reply to this notice, ſays: “That he need not have taken this pains, as no perſon where he is known, will truſt her to the amount of a ſingle cent on his account, and as for bed and board, he never had any for her—and aſks how ſhe could deſtroy his property, when he never had any, except three dice, a sweat-cloth, and a rum bottle.”

   • 1864 (March), “Games of Chance as an Amusement”, The Ladies’ Repository, pages 252–258:

     What is a race-course but a convention of gambling hells out of doors, where, in a wider net, more of the weak and the vain are caught at the faro-bank or sweat-cloth, or induced in the excitement to bet on the horses?

• chuck-a-luck
• birdcage

• crown and anchor