KEY TAKEAWAYS
In July 1891, an English engineer and inventor named Charles Deville Wells sat down at a roulette table in the casino at Monte Carlo and, according to biographer Robin Quinn, broke the bank several times in a single day. British readers learned his name on Monday, August 3, 1891, a bank holiday, and a music hall song about the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo followed. The song says nothing about what came next. Inside Time, a prison newspaper, says his inventor’s business was a front for defrauding investors, and in March 1893 a London court sentenced him to eight years for obtaining money on false pretences. In 1912 a Paris court sentenced him to five more years over a private bank. This article tells the documented story of Wells and lays out the points on which the sources disagree: how much he won, how he did it, and what became of him.
Monte Carlo Before Wells Arrived
To understand why a roulette win could make headlines across Britain, it helps to know what Monte Carlo was. According to the Monaco government’s history pages, Prince Charles III conceded the principality’s gambling monopoly to the Société des Bains de Mer in 1856, and in 1863 it was conceded to the entrepreneur François Blanc, who had made a casino succeed in Germany. The government says the concession obliged the company to provide public services such as water, gas, roads and transport links, because the principality had lost roughly 90 percent of its territory and needed new income.
The casino traded on scarcity. Monte Carlo’s own corporate history says gambling was banned in nearly all of Europe, which drew a cosmopolitan clientele of aristocrats, wealthy players, artists and businessmen, and it says the hotel and cafe built beside the casino turned the site into a resort. Stanford lecturer Mark Braude, author of Making Monte Carlo, told Stanford Report that Monaco held a monopoly on legalized gambling in southern Europe and that Blanc built an entire town around the casino because he expected to lose that advantage in time. Braude adds that Blanc helped bring about industrial gambling, in which players wager against a faceless house rather than against each other.
The table game at the center of the Wells story was roulette. The casino’s history credits Blanc with introducing the single-zero wheel, which has 37 pockets, and says roulette and trente-et-quarante were the favorites of Monte Carlo’s celebrity visitors from the late 1860s. Quinn explains the phrase that Wells made famous: each table was stocked with 100,000 francs in cash at the start of each day, and to break the bank meant to clean out that table’s cash reserve, after which the table was temporarily closed and covered with a black cloth.
July 1891: Eleven Hours at the Roulette Table
Wells was born in 1841 in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and grew up in Marseille, where his father taught English, according to Inside Time. He developed an interest in engineering and tried his luck as an inventor; Inside Time lists a musical skipping rope among his ideas. By the 1880s he had returned to England and set up a business in London’s Regent’s Park that, according to the same account, served as a front for defrauding investors. The Financial Times, summarizing Quinn’s biography, says he turned to fraud in his forties, and Inside Time names Catherine Phillimore as his first victim, from whom it says he took £18,860.
Inside Time says Wells acquired a ship, the Tycho Brae, intending to turn it into a luxury yacht, and went to Monte Carlo in 1891 with £4,000 to stake at roulette. Quinn writes that in July 1891 he reached the casino at midday and began to play at the roulette table, and that in the course of eleven hours he broke the bank several times in a row. On the following days, Quinn says, he did the same again, and in less than a week he had won £40,000. The Financial Times, retelling Quinn’s account, says he sat down with £4,000 at noon and stayed until 11 p.m.
The news reached Britain slowly. Quinn says a trickle of short reports about an Englishman’s success at the Monte Carlo tables appeared over two or three days before Monday, August 3, 1891, when his name was published for the first time. One report concluded that people in Monte Carlo and Nice were talking of nothing but his success. The Financial Times, discussing why a casino might welcome such a streak, notes that the buzz generated by big winners attracted more customers.
An Advertisement, a Second Trip and a Song
On September 7, 1891, Quinn says, Wells placed an advertisement in The Times under the pseudonym Perseverance, seeking a financial partner for a return trip to Monte Carlo. The notice offered a partner a share it described as £30,000 a month, or £1,000 a day, with a stated liability limit of £6,000. Quinn writes that he received several replies, and he asks in his book whether the notice was a scam like Wells’s earlier ventures or a genuine offer, a question the surviving record does not settle in the sources used here.
The Quinn book page says Wells made two visits to the casino in 1891. Gambling columnist Mark Pilarski, writing on Casino City Times, puts the second visit in November and says Wells won roughly another million francs in three days. That figure comes from a single secondary source and is best read as one account among several. In the meantime the casino win had become a song. The Financial Times says Fred Gilbert wrote the music hall hit in 1891 and that the singer Charles Coborn bought the rights for £10 and built an act around it, delivering it dressed as a toff.
Not everyone accepted the story at face value. The Spectator, reporting Wells’s conviction in March 1893, described him as the engineer who won £40,000 at Monte Carlo or, at all events, told the telegraphic agents that he did. The magazine’s main subject was the conviction, and the casino win was a passing remark.
From the Casino to the Old Bailey
Inside Time says Wells used his winnings to refurbish the Tycho Brae, which he renamed the Palais Royal, and that he was arrested aboard her at Le Havre in 1892 and extradited to Britain to face fraud charges. His trial at the Old Bailey opened on March 9, 1893, and the same source says it lasted five days. The Spectator, dated March 18, 1893, reported that on Tuesday, which was March 14, the Central Criminal Court condemned him to eight years’ imprisonment for obtaining money on false pretences.
The Spectator described the plan as the alchemists’ trick with a variation: Wells did not say he could make gold, but said he could patent inventions that would yield hundreds of thousands of pounds, which he would make over to anyone who paid him a few thousand pounds in advance. It reported that W. C. Trench had advanced him £6,000 and that Catherine Phillimore had advanced a larger sum. Inside Time, which puts her losses at £18,860, says that he served six years, spending time at Wormwood Scrubs and Dartmoor. The Financial Times says a crowd serenaded him with the famous song outside Wormwood Scrubs on a bank holiday in 1893, and that the public saw him as a Robin Hood figure.
The record of the victims is less cheerful than the song. After his release Wells did not stay out of trouble. Inside Time says that in 1910 he opened a private bank in Paris promising investors interest of 365 percent, which works out to 1 percent a day, and defrauded his customers of nearly two million francs before fleeing to Britain when French police investigated. He was arrested in January 1912 and extradited, and in November 1912 he was sentenced to five years in prison. Inside Time says he died in 1922 and was buried in an unmarked grave in North Sheen Cemetery, and the Financial Times says he died owing two weeks’ rent and was buried in a pauper’s grave.
How Much Did He Win, and How?
The sources agree that Wells won a large sum at Monte Carlo in 1891, but little else about the win is settled. On the amount, Quinn’s website gives £40,000 within a week of his first visit and £60,000 across two visits, while a 2023 post by Quinn says later analysis showed Wells took £4,000 to Monte Carlo and left with £10,000. Inside Time and Pilarski give one million francs, and Pilarski adds another million in November. The Spectator reported only that Wells told the telegraphic agents he had won £40,000. These figures are in different currencies and measure different things, and this article does not convert between them.
On the method, no explanation has been proved. Quinn says some observers thought an engineer might have found a mechanical imperfection in a wheel, others thought a fraudster might have found a way to swindle the casino, and Wells himself dismissed both ideas, claiming an infallible system based on watching for recurring sequences of numbers. Inside Time mentions a theory that the win was a publicity stunt arranged by the casino’s owner and says luck is the most credible reason; the Financial Times says collusion with the casino’s director is possible. Quinn reports that the casino’s present owners admit the success has never been satisfactorily explained.
On the details, Inside Time and Pilarski both say Wells won 23 of 30 spins at one sitting. A single-number bet on a 37-pocket wheel has a 1 in 37 chance, about 2.7 percent, on each spin, and the accounts reviewed here do not say which bets were placed, so the figure should be read as reported rather than verified. Pilarski places the song in 1892 while the Financial Times says 1891; he says Wells died penniless in Paris in 1926, while two other sources say 1922. The other side of the legend is the cost: the song celebrated a win, but the court record concerns the people Wells defrauded.
Charles Wells Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1841 | Wells born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire (Inside Time) |
| 1880s | Returns to England and sets up an inventor’s business in London (Inside Time) |
| July 1891 | First Monte Carlo visit; eleven hours at the roulette table (Quinn) |
| August 3, 1891 | Wells’s name published in Britain on the bank holiday (Quinn) |
| September 7, 1891 | Advertisement in The Times seeking a partner for a return trip (Quinn) |
| November 1891 | Second visit, according to Pilarski |
| 1892 | Arrested at Le Havre aboard the Palais Royal; extradited (Inside Time) |
| March 9 to 14, 1893 | Old Bailey trial; eight years’ imprisonment on March 14 (Spectator, Inside Time) |
| 1899 | Released after six years (Inside Time, Financial Times) |
| 1910 | Opens private bank in Paris (Inside Time) |
| January and November 1912 | Arrested; sentenced in Paris to five years (Inside Time) |
| 1922 | Death, according to Inside Time and the Financial Times |
Related Stories
To see how roulette itself developed into the game played at Monte Carlo, read the history of roulette. For a very different kind of famous gambler, one who set out to beat casinos with mathematics, see Edward O. Thorp, and for the blackjack player who took casinos to court, read Ken Uston.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources & References
- Robin Quinn — The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, book page (The History Press, 2016)
- Robin Quinn — Charles Deville Wells, The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (2016)
- Robin Quinn — 125 years ago (2016)
- Robin Quinn — 3 August: On this day in Monte Carlo (2023)
- Helen Brown, Financial Times — The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (2023)
- Inside Time — Dartmoor remembered: Charles Wells (2021)
- The Spectator — Charles Wells, engineer, who won £40,000 at Monte Carlo (March 18, 1893)
- Government of Monaco — Economic miracle (history and heritage)
- Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer — corporate history press kit (2013)
- Stanford Report — Stanford scholar explores the glitz and glamour behind Monte Carlo (2016)
- Mark Pilarski, Casino City Times — What does the phrase breaking the bank mean? (2006)
