"The game had no name and is probably as old as creation itself." -- Jean Shepherd, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (1966)
You need three things to have a dead pool: 1) celebrities, 2) news media that chronicle lives and passings, and 3) two people who differ in their opinions. Even if one insists that the existence of celebrities and news media requires civilization and cities, it is still easy to imagine that dead pools existed in Babylon, Athens, and Rome.
In fact, the earliest reference we have found to wagering on the death of a famous figure comes from the Vatican. On March 21, 1591, the newly minted Pope Gregory XIV, in his Papal Bull "Cogit nos," forbade under pain of excommunication all wagering on the duration of the pontificate, i.e. when the Pope would die, as well as on the creation of new cardinals and the election of a new pope. Such wagering had reached epidemic proportions in the Curia Romana, the body of congregations, offices and permanent commissions that assist the pope in the government and administration of the Church.
Noted one writer, "Some persons (who were) engaged in that illicit and indecent wagering, in order to save themselves from loss, sometimes disturbed the elections; and others, to increase their chance of winning, did not blush to circulate calumnies against worthy men who were thought likely to be raised to the purple." (The Chevalier Artaud De Montor in The Lives and Times of the Popes, 1911). And surely Gregory didn't want people trying to arrange the end of his pontificate to score some extra lire. He did well to worry; he died on Oct. 15, 1591, after just 10 months and 10 days under the papal tiara.
Betting on cardinals and popes continues to this day; in January 2001, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power was offering odds of 1000-1 against Sinead O'Connor succeeding Pope John Paul II.
An early literary reference to someone betting on death comes from Mark Twain, in his 1865 short story "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (aka "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"). In the narrator's preamble, he sets the stage by telling us that Jim Smiley would "bet on any thing." And he tells this story: "Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was considerable better -- thank the Lord for his inf'nite mercy -- and coming on so smart that with the blessing of Prov'dence she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, 'Well, I'll resk two-and-half she don't anyway.' "
The earliest reference to something resembling an actual dead pool in literature dates from 1885, a passing mention in Bel-Ami, a novel by Guy de Maupassant (brought to our attention by The Bury Pranksters of our Game). It is as likely as not that the novelist was writing from experience here, rather than fabricating. In Chapter Six, Georges Duroy is speaking to Madame Walter, and says:
"Incidentally, I'm like you and I very much enjoy reading about the death of an academician in the newspapers. I always ask myself immediately: 'Who's going to succeed him?' And I draw up my list. It's a game, a very amusing little game that they play in every drawing-room in Paris whenever an 'Immortal' passes on: the game of Death and the Forty Old Men."
Duroy is referring to the French Academy, formally chartered in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, with its number fixed at 40 members who were to represent France's wisest and most learned. A new member could be added to the Academy only when an existing member died, hence any death in the ranks was doubly noted by the public -- firstly as the passing of someone famous and secondly as an opportunity for a new worthy to ascend into the revered company. It's a small step for observers to speculate who among the 40 might be the next to die, and who might replace him, and to differ in their choices. "Death and the Forty Old Men" might well have been played for many, many years before de Maupassant noted it in 1885.
The earliest record for a contemporary dead pool is from an article that ran on June 9, 1977, in the Albany (New York) Times-Union, in which John Maguire writes about a pool organized at a New York City newspaper in the 1930's. Because we can date the deaths mentioned at the end, we at least know when this particular pool ended.
Under the headline, "Grisly pool recalled in NY," we read:
"An item here about the tavern that had a pool one Labor Day weekend on the number of highway deaths in the state brought to mind a similar sort of gambling pool that existed at one of the big New York City papers back in the Thirties. It seems to me that I've mentioned this one before, but everybody I've described it to in the past few weeks has acted as if they'd never heard it, so maybe I didn't.
"The genius who devised this macabre lottery is unknown, at least to me, but he did have an original idea. He chose 100 persons of some prominence, people important enough to merit newspaper obituaries at death, and he wrote their names on individual slips of paper, folded them and put them in a hat. Then he went through the plant -- the city room, sports department, composing room, business office, and so on -- and for a dollar's initial contribution, each participant picked a name out of the hat.
"You kept the name you'd obtained for an indefinite period, but each week you paid in another dollar. The pot thus grew bigger each week, and the players in the game kept studying the obituary columns, because the winner would be the person holding the slip on which was written the name of the first one of the 100 prominent persons to die.
"I forgot to say above that no superannuated crocks were among those listed; all were middle-aged or thereabouts. So there were no deaths for a long time and the story I heard years ago is that the pool added to nearly $7,000 when it was finally won.
"And two of the gamblers split the pot -- because nobody knows even today whether Wiley Post or Will Rogers died first in that plane crash in Alaska."
Because we know that Post and Rogers crashed on August 15, 1935, we can date the pool's end. If the amount of cash is close to correct, the pool probably originated in 1934. As for Post and Rogers, their crash near Point Barrow, Alaska, shook the nation. Post was a very famous aviator -- the first man to fly solo around the world -- and Will Rogers was a beloved humorist, famous on stage, radio, the silver screen and the pages of the daily newspaper.
More recently, dead pools gained greater public awareness with The Dead Pool, a 1988 Warner Brothers film produced by and starring Clint Eastwood, written by Steve Sharon, from a story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. "Dirty Harry" Callahan (Eastwood) talks to a film director named Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) about a 'death list' with a dead rock star on it. Appropriately enough, the conversation takes place in a cemetery. Swan says, "It's no big secret... The Dead Pool is just a harmless game." To which Callahan replies, "Sounds pretty sick to me."
For current accounts of the Death Game and other Dead Pools, click here.
