A history of… playing cards

There is a good reason that the Ace of Spades is known as the 'death card'…

I have held playing cards in my hands countless thousand times over the decades, but until today it never occurred to me to wonder where and when they came from. It turns out that they have a long and fascinating history which I will share with you now!

Mamluk kanjifah playing cards (Wikipedia CC-BY-4.0)

Playing cards were probably invented in China during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) though they were rather different to the ones that we are familiar with today. There is a reference to something called the ‘leaf game’ being played by Princess Tongchang in 868 CE but it is unclear exactly what these leaves were. We know that this game often involved drinking – it was reported that the Emperor Muzong went on a 25-day drinking spree in the year 969 and on New Year’s Eve (26th February) “he played the game of leaves with his ministers”. This game would have been yezi ge (Rules of Leaves) but as long ago as 1067 CE it was recorded that there was no one alive who remembered how to play the game.

It is thought that these early cards were used in conjunction with dice, or were simply drawn at random and the recipients had to perform the forfeits (generally consuming alcohol) that were indicated upon them. Early in the second millennium domino cards emerged; these were, as the name suggests, paper equivalents of domino tiles, and as such very different from modern playing cards. The true forerunners of today’s cards were most likely Chinese money cards which, significantly, had four different suits:  cash (single coins), strings (of cash), myriads (of strings) and tens of myriads. These cards were combined to form a deck of 38 cards:

• Cash: 9 cards from 9 to 1 cash 

• Strings: 9 cards, 9–1

• Myriads: 9 cards, 9–1

• Tens of myriads:  11 cards, from 20 to 100 myriads, plus 1,000 myriads and a ‘myriad myriads’.

These were used to play a trick-taking game called Madiao which the scholar Lu Rong (1436–1494) recalls being teased about due to his lack of familiarity with the rules when he was a government student in Kunshan. There is something of is something of an annoying lacuna in the history here, for while the earliest Chinese record of such a suited deck is from the 15th century we know that playing cards had spread from China to the Middle East by the 13th century. This does suggest that the cards used in the leaf game or similar pastimes were likely suited too.

The earliest surviving playing cards are four Egyptian fragments which date from the 12th and 13th centuries and are known as Mamluk cards as they date from the Mamluk Sultanate which ruled Egypt and the wider Levant from the early 13th century to the mid-16th century. An almost complete deck (actually a number of different packs combined to make a full set after cards had been lost) of very similar design was found in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul and dates from the 15th century.  

This deck is essentially identical to the ones that we used today. It contains 52 cards, 13 each of four suits: polo sticks, coins, swords and cups. Each suit consists of 10 pip (number) cards and three court cards: malik (king), nā'ib malik (viceroy or deputy king), and thānī nā'ib (second or under-deputy). These cards made their way from Egypt into Europe most likely sometime in the mid-13th century. Most of the earliest references to playing cards in Europe relate to, err, laws banning them! In Florence in 1377 there was an ordinance that refers to “a certain game called nabbie, newly introduced in these parts” and goes on to say that “[playing] cards were to be treated just as strictly as gambling.” The same year in Paris an ordinance prohibited “card-play in contexts clearly directed at the working classes”. Interestingly a similar ordinance from eight years earlier makes no mention of playing cards, which suggests they were relatively new on the scene.

The suits of these early European cards were the same as the Mamluk decks, with one tweak – as polo was effectively unknown in Europe at the time¹ the polo stick suit was changed into batons or clubs.

Now is probably an appropriate time to have a little bit of a diversion about playing card suits. Before researching this piece I assumed, naive anglophone that I am, that everyone used playing cards with the same suits – clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. I was totally wrong. Latin suits with coins, batons (clubs), cups, and swords are still used in Italy, Spain and Portugal. In the 15th century manufacturers in German-speaking countries modified these, specifically Swiss-Germans, who invented their own suits of shield, roses, acorn and bells around 1450 (and again these are still used). Non-Swiss German speakers tweaked these around 1460 swapping out the roses and shields for hearts and leaves. Some time around 1480 the French derived their suits of trèfles (clovers or clubs ♣), carreaux (tiles or diamonds ♦), cœurs (hearts ♥) and piques (pikes or spades ♠), and these ‘French suits’ have been used in the English-speaking world ever since.

Another point of variation between countries is the nature of the court (or ‘face’) cards. In the original Mamluk decks these three characters were all male, and this was copied for the early European decks, but tweaked a little so that there was a seated ‘king’ for the highest value card followed by an upper marshal (who held the symbol of the suit upwards) and lower marshal (similarly downwards) – typically these two characters were on foot, rather than seated. These roles still persist in German decks as Ober and Unter cards. The Queen first appeared as a card in Italian tarot decks, and was briefly included in some German decks in the 14th century before being discarded but then fully adopted by the French around 1500.

Deck celebrating the union of Brittany and France with Spanish suits but has queens instead of knights (Antoine de Logiriera of Toulouse, c. 1500)

Playing cards have been regarded with a degree of suspicion by authorities for much of their history due to their associations with gambling and drinking – it is no coincidence that some of the earliest references to them relate to their prohibition. The English, rather than imposing bans upon the playing of cards, instead saw them as a means of generating money for the government. On 20th July 1615 Sir Richard Coningsby was awarded the right to tax all manufactures of playing cards, as Lord Thomas Howard, first Earl of Suffolk and first Baron Howard De Walde (1561–1626), cheerily reported:

After my heartie commendations, whereby it hath pleased his Majestie to direct a Privy Seal to me, touching the imposition of five shillings upon every grosse of Playing Cards that shall be Imported into this Kingdome or the Dominions thereof by vertue of his Majestie’s Letters Patents granted to Sir Richard Coningsby knight under the Great Scale of England. In regard whereof These are to wil and require you to take notice thereof and not to suffer any merchant to make any entry of Playing-Cards until the same impositions be payed according to the same Letters patents Provided that the Patentees give caution for maintayning the Custome and Import according to a Medium thereof to be made as in such cases is used: And so having signified his Majestie’s pleasure to you in that behalfe I bid you heartily farewell.

Your loving Friend,

Tho. SUFFOLKE.

Less than a century later the rate was increased by Queen Anne to sixpence a pack as she sought to raise more income to support the army. This tax was set to run for 32 years, starting on 11th June 1711, and all card manufactures had to register the address of their business operations. Ostensibly this increase was to reduce levels of gambling but not everyone was convinced by the approach:²

If any of your Honours hope by this Tax to suppress expensive Card-playing, It is answered, That the Common sort who play for innocent diversion will by this tax be only hinder’d ; for those sharp gamesters who play for money but do not use the Twentieth part of the Cards sold, will not by this Tax be discouraged; for those who play for many Pounds at a game will not be hindered by paying 12d. per pack.

Amazingly the tax on playing cards continued in the UK until 1960! You may think that this was a fairly trivial thing, not taken too seriously, but you would be dead wrong. Initially card printers had to use an official hand-stamp on the Ace of Spades card, but from the mid-18th century onwards the system changed. Manufactures would print decks of 51 cards and then purchase what was termed a ‘Duty Ace’ from the Stamp Office to complete the set. These Aces of Spades had incredibly intricate designs to make them hard to forge – which is why this card is distinct from other aces in the deck to this day. In 1804 an Act of Parliament reaffirmed that forging such cards to evade duty was a felony, and if you were convicted of a felony the punishment was typically… death! And people did receive it, as this article from the General Evening Post for 24th September 1805 recounts:

Richard Harding was capitally indicted for forging and counterfeiting certain stamps, or Stamp Office marks, of the Ace of Spades, on playing cards, and vending and uttering the same knowng them to be forged and counterfeited, contrary to the statute of the 44th of the King.

This was a trial of considerable interest, carried on at the prosecution of the Commissioners of Stamp Duties. The prisoner was a cardmaker, in a most eminent and respectable line of trade, and carried on his business at two different houses, licensed for the purpose, viz. in Hereford-street, Oxford-road, and in Green Street, Grosvenor-square. The suspicions against the prisoner were excited in the Commissioners by the very small number of stamps he took out, in proportion to the extensive line of business he carried on; in consequence of which they employed persons to purchase different quantities of cards at his house, from the examination of which the forgeries were detected.

John Rivett, a Bow Street Officer, deposed, that he went with Carpmeal and Miller, on the 25th June, to Hereford-street, and apprehended the prisoner, his apprentice, and another servant of his. Nothing particular was found there; went to Leadbeater’s, and there found two copperplates of the ace of spades, and some paper, on the top of a rolling press. Went also to Skelton’s, and there found, in the room behind the yard, an iron fly press, two rowllers of a rolling-press, a flannel jacket, a. red-ink ball, and a marble slab; on searching the dust hole below, they found the remainder of the rolling-press, and the plates hid under ground in the garden; in the back room there were three gross of packs of cads made up, but without the aces of spades. On the 9th of July they went again to Leadbeater’s, and found the plates, with aces of spades in the privy. In the house of Mr. Shingler they found, in a box with foul linen, a roll of papers containing impressions of the ace of spades.

An Officer of the Stamp Office proved that this parcel contained 3,000 impressions of the ace of spades.

The Distributor of Stamps proved that the ace of spaces he delivers out to the card-makers are always twenty on a sheet; and consequently no aces not so printed have been printed at the Stamp Office.

Here closed the evidence for the prosecution; the prisoner adduced no evidence to disprove any one of the charges, but a number of most respectable tradesmen from his own neighbourhood, who knew him for a series of years gave him a most excellent character.

The Jury, after a short consultation, found a verdict Guilty, Death. —Aged 35.

Playing cards also had a criminal association in Japan in the late 19th century. Most form of gambling were banned, but doing so with hanafuda (花札, ‘flower cards’) was permitted and there was a strong demand for these cards from yakuza-run gambling dens. Most card manufactures declined to print these cards, not wishing to be tainted by the association with lawlessness. One company however, founded in 1889, saw this gap in the market as a way to make money and they had a number of very profitable years doing so. They then moved into mass-producing regular cards and in the decades since have diversified their business operations significantly. You’ve probably heard of them – the company is called Nintendo…

1. While today the sport of polo may be considered to be largely the preserve of the British and Argentinian upper-classes, it was invented in Persia more than 2,000 years ago and the British only really started playing it in India in the 19th century.

2. Annoyingly I can’t find the original source for this quote – it is taken from a book published in 1879.