also be six. Two court cards will count as zero, or baccarat. The idea of the game is to get nine points. A player may ask for one extra card to be added to their hand. Betting is between the player and the bank, with the closest to reach nine on a hand receiving the stake. In 1886 the High Court of Justice in London ruled in the Parks case—Jenks v. Turpin—that baccarat was a game of chance rather than skill, and was therefore illegal when gambling was involved. In reporting the case, The Times described baccarat as "a new game, partly of chance, at which £1,000 may be lost in 20 minutes". After a solicitor asked the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, to clarify the position regarding baccarat in social clubs and private houses, the Home Office civil servant Godfrey Lushington stated that there was nothing in the court's judgment that made baccarat illegal if not played for money. The former Shadow Home Secretary and historian Roy Hattersley comments that although baccarat was illegal, "worse still in the eyes of many Englishmen, [it was] thought to be popular in France". Visit to Tranby Croft Preliminary events In the years running up to 1890 the Prince of Wales had taken to visiting Doncaster Racecourse for the Doncaster Cup. In previous years he had stayed at Brantingham Thorpe with his friend Sir Christopher Sykes, the Conservative MP for Beverley. Sykes had run into financial difficulties and could not afford to host Edward, and Tranby Croft, home to Arthur Wilson and family, became the venue. After consulting with the prince, the Wilsons also invited some of Edward's inner circle, including Sykes, Gordon-Cumming and the prince's courtiers: the equerry Tyrwhitt Wilson, Lord Coventry, Lord Edward Somerset, Captain Arthur Somerset—his cousin—and Lieutenant-General Owen Williams, along with their wives. Also accompanying the party was Lieutenant Berkeley Levett, a brother officer to Gordon-Cumming in the Scots Guards and a friend of the Wilson family. Among those originally invited were Lord Brooke and his wife Daisy; her step-father died two days before the party was due to leave London, and she and her husband withdrew from the trip. Daisy, the prince's mistress at the time, was known to some journalists as "babbling" Brooke because of her propensity to gossip. On 6 September Edward returned early from travelling in Europe; he visited Harriet Street where he found Daisy Brooke