Games like Pigeon Hole come up a lot when researching old bagatelle boards. It was easy to lay a wooden set of gates across an existing playfield to create a new game experience. But I quickly realize that "Pigeon Hole" was just one in a long line of games that used arches at the end of a table.
The idea of shooting a ball through gates on the table is one of the earliest innovations, appearing relatively shortly after billiards evolved from a lawn game into an indoor table game. These games are all billiards variants. Actually, I'm not sure. We have references to trou madam being played in the 16th century just on a regular table, so who knows. There were many lawn games where you had to pitch a ball through a gate, so probably the real innovation of trou madam is codifying the set of arches.
It was these arches, which came up from lawn games similar to croquet and now sit on a table, that I might have to consider the true birthplace of pinball. It is the arches that carried forward through the centuries and would lead to the innovations that gave us pinball. (with a few innovations from co-evolving table game cousins being absorbed back in, of course.) Pinball is the result of an evolution beginning with aristocratic table games, and the trou madam arches are one of the earliest innovations in table games we can trace.
I see a few epochs in regards to pinball ancestry:
- the rise of billiards and other aristocratic table games, coming from lawn games (15th century onward)
- the tilted playfield and pin bagatelle (probably late 18th century)
- the invention of the springed plunger (debatable, probably mid 1800s)
- the addition of a coinop mechanism (late 19th century)
- the "first pinball machines" like Whiffle and Whoopee, with full automated ball circulation
- electric flippers (1947 onward, beginning with Humpty Dumpty)
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| 1630 engraving by Matthaus Merian shows trou madam being played on a regular table. The balls are being rolled by hand, no maces or cues used. |
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| 1674 illustration showing a gate on the playfield for Port & Kings, showing the use of arches in other table/billiards games. |
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1782-08-04 troumadam illustration from Gillows records
(from the book A Short Dictionary of Furniture by Gloag) |
Here is the entry on Mississippi
from the 1810 edition, where it describes it as a billiard-like game where the balls are 'cast' (rolled) towards a set of arches for points.
I had previously thought Mississippi to be exclusively a cue/mace game, but I suppose it started out with just rolling the balls, so as a variant of the earliest trou madam. It's hard to tell for sure with just this description to go on.
The only real difference between Trou Madam and Mississippi is that Trou Madam lets you shoot straight into the scoring holes, while in Mississippi you have to bounce of the side bumper.
(James tells me in a chat, "Earlier tables were not smooth, uniform or level so knocking it straight into a hole was more of a challenge. As table technology improved and maces changed to cues so accuracy also improved, it became too easy. So then they added the rule that you had to bounce it off a cushion to make it suitably challenging.")
Mississippi requires bouncing the ball off the cushion first, and the text talks of "two small cushions placed against the sides, to be used in the game of Mississippi; or instead of these the boards are sometimes stuffed round the sides." Early billiards tables did not have cushioned sides, and by the mid 19th century when industrial rubber was still quite new, I imagine tables with cushions comparable to what we know today were few an immense luxury.
The earliest known mention is "Troule in Madame" in The Benefit of the Ancient Bathes of Buckstones.
Oh hey look it's that 1572 quote:
A friend offered this modern take on the above text,
The Ladies, Gentle Women, Wives and Maids may in one of the Galleries walk: and if the weather be not agreeable to their expectation, they may have in the end of the Bench eleven holes made, into which to "trowle pummetes" or Bowls of lead, big, little or mean [average], or also of Copper, Tin, Wood, either violent or soft, after their own discretion, the pastime Troule in Madame is termed.
Likewise, men feeble, the same may also practice in another Gallery of the new buildings, and this does not only strengthen the stomach and the upper parts above the midriff or waist: but also the middle parts beneath the sharp "Gristle" and the extreme parts, the the hands and legs, according to the weight of the thing "trouled", fast, soft or mean.
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| Pigeon Hole tables from 1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog |
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| 1883 The Parepa Table & Pigeon Hole Table - Brunswick and Balke Co. Billiard and Pool Table Catalog |
from a liveauctioneers sale:
British, late 19th century, inlaid mahogany, with playing accessories, 30-1/2 x 24-1/2 x 57 in.; Provenance: Private New England Collection
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| trou madam arches
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| Trou Madame Table by Gillows of Lancaster |
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| Trou Madame Table by Gillows of Lancaster |
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| Trou Madame Table by Gillows of Lancaster |
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perhaps playing off the popularity of the "Jenny Lind" table (a game similar to modern bar billiards), the table here is named "Dolly Varden"
from the 1880 Geo. Rettberg catalog |
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| from the 1880 Geo. Rettberg catalog |
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I do not find a lot of references to New Parepa, but here it is in the 1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog
The angled gates meant it was more aligned for banked shots. |
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New Nilsson Table - 1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog
very similar to Parepa |
An example of how pigeon hole, Mississippi, etc could be played on a 9-hole bagatelle table using a wooden arch set.
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| classic 9-hole English bagatelle board |
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