Three queens are removed from a standard pack of 52 cards, leaving the fourth queen representing the 'Old Maid'. Old Maid is a girls' game and any number may play. The following is a summary of the rules by Leslie (1831): This was boosted in England when proprietary cards emerged with nursery rhyme figures in 1883 under the name Merry Matches which, according to Bazaar, Exchange and Mart was a 'newly invented game', despite its obvious derivation from Old Maid. Īpart from reprints of Leslie, the game largely disappeared from the literature during the mid-19th century but experienced something of a revival in the 1880s.

In its day it was seen as the equivalent of 'old bachelor'.

The term 'old maid' predates the game and referred to a childless or unmarried woman. These games originally employed a pack of 32 or 52 French cards, the queen of diamonds or jack of spades typically being the odd card and the player who is last in and left holding a single queen or jack becoming the 'old maid', ' vieux garçon', or 'Black Peter' depending on the game. All these games are probably ancient and derived from simple gambling games in which the aim was to determine a loser who had to pay for the next round of drinks (c.f. Meanwhile the rules of the French game, Vieux Garçon, first appear in 1853. However, it may well be older and derived the German game of Black Peter, whose rules are recorded as early as 1821. The rules of the game are first recorded in a book for girls by Eliza Leslie, who published them in America in 1831 and England in 1835 under the names Old Maid (when played by girls) or Old Bachelor (when played by boys). Old Maid is a 19th-century American card game for two or more players, probably deriving from an ancient European gambling game in which the loser pays for the drinks.

Old maid card game history