John Aspinall (zoo owner)

Dr. Robert Stivala Aspinall (1895–1954), a British Army surgeon of British parentage and Maltese origin; he had added Aspinall to his original surname Stivala after joining the Indian Medical Service, being known for some time as Robert Aspinall-Stivala.

John Victor Aspinall (11 June 1926 – 29 June 2000) was an English zoo and casino owner.

John Victor Aspinall, known to all his friends as "Aspers", was born in Delhi, British India on 11 June 1926, the son of Lt-Col.

Aspinall attended Felsted School in 1939 but, after his parents divorced, his stepfather Sir George Osborne sent him to Rugby School, from which he was expelled for inattention.

Aspinall later went to Jesus College, Oxford, but on the day of his final exams he feigned illness and went to the Gold Cup at Ascot racecourse instead.

As a consequence, he never earned a degree.

Aspinall became a bookmaker; at that time the only gambling permitted by UK law was with cash and credit on the premises of racecourses and dog tracks, with credit by an account with a bookmaker, and on football pools.

Casino gambling was not permitted at the time.

However, between races Aspinall returned to London and hosted private gaming parties.

He believed that games of Chemin de Fer, known as Chemie (Chemmy), were within the law in certain circumstances, and on average the owner of the house was able to make a 5% profit on the turnover of games.

Aspinall targeted his events at the rich, sending out embossed invitations.

Gambling houses were defined then in British law as places where gambling had taken place more than three times.

With his Irish-born accountant John Burke, Aspinall rented upper class flats and houses, never used them more than three times, and had his mother pay off local Metropolitan Police officers.

Among the gamblers were the Queen's racehorse trainer Bernard van Cutsem, who brought with him friends including the Earl of Derby and the Duke of Devonshire.

In 1958, Aspinall was living at Howletts Zoo, in Kent; at one point his mother Mary (Lady Osborne) had forgotten to pay off corrupt police officers, so the police raided his game that night.

Aspinall, John Burke and Lady Osborne were all charged with gaming offences but won the subsequent court case, the outcome of which is known as Aspinall's Law.

The win created a vast increase in Chemie games, during which:

From upper class beginnings he used gambling to move to the centre of British high society in the 1960s.

He was born in Delhi during the British Raj, and was a citizen of the United Kingdom.

In response to Aspinall's win in court, the British Government brought forward the Betting and Gaming Act 1960, which when enacted allowed commercial bingo halls to be set up, provided they were established as members-only clubs and made their profit from membership fees and charges, and not from a percentage of the money staked.

Casinos were required to operate under the same rules, with a licence from the Gaming Board of Great Britain (now the Gambling Commission), and to be members-only.

The passing of these laws brought Aspinall's Chemie-based 5% business model to a close, and he had to find a new business.

In 1962, Aspinall founded the Clermont Club in London's Mayfair.

The club was named after Lord Clermont, a gambler who had previously owned the building in Berkeley Square.

The club's original members included five dukes, five marquesses, twenty earls and two cabinet ministers.

Overheads were higher, and under the new laws, Aspinall was required to pay tax, only making a table charge which produced much smaller revenue for the house.

In Douglas Thompson's book The Hustlers, and the later documentary on Channel 4, The Real Casino Royale, the club's former financial director John Burke and gangster Billy Hill's associate John McKew, claimed that Aspinall worked with Hill to employ criminals to cheat the players.

Some of the wealthiest people in Britain were swindled out of millions of pounds, thanks to a gambling con known as "the Big Edge".

John Burke quit in late 1965, a year into the scam.

After two years operation the Big Edge was closed.

Hill respected Aspinall's decision and the two parted.

The passing of the 1968 Gaming Act boosted profits, and he sold The Clermont in 1972.

The need for revenue to support his zoos prompted Aspinall to return to running gambling clubs in London, and he set up two new successful ones in Knightsbridge (in 1978) and Mayfair.

In 1983, he made $30 million from their sale, but a decade later he was in financial difficulties once more, and in 1992 he set up yet another gambling spot, Aspinalls.

In his years at Oxford, Aspinall had loved the book Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard, about an illegitimate Zulu prince who lived outside his tribe among wild animals.

His wife was Mary Grace Horn (died 1987), the daughter of engineer Clement Samuel Horn, of Goring-by-Sea, Sussex.

Years later, when he pressed his father for money to cover his gambling debts, he discovered that his biological father was George Bruce, a soldier of Nordic descent.

The standard bet was £1,000, which would be £25,000 accounting for inflation in 2007 figures.

Chemie games were quick and played every 30 seconds, with £50,000 changing hands per game.

On his first such event Aspinall made a profit of £10,000, a sum roughly equivalent to £300,000 in 2017 money.