bagatelle notes: Trou Madam, Mississippi, Pigeon Hole

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:

1. the rise of billiards and other aristocratic table games, coming from lawn games (15th century onward)
2. the tilted playfield and pin bagatelle (probably late 18th century)
3. the invention of the springed plunger (debatable, probably mid 1800s)
4. the addition of a coinop mechanism (late 19th century)
5. the "first pinball machines" like Whiffle and Whoopee, with full automated ball circulation
6. electric flippers (1947 onward, beginning with Humpty Dumpty)

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.

1674 illustration showing a gate on the playfield for Port & Kings, showing the use of arches in other table/billiards games.

1782-08-04 troumadam illustration from Gillows records
(from the book A Short Dictionary of Furniture by Gloag)

on naming the bagatelles

It is hard to definitively understand the world of billiard variants.  The game(s) travelled the world many times over, some names were only used in certain regions, some regional-sounding names were given with little-to-no connection to those territories, and many times historical sources would naively swap names around.

This is another work-in-progress post where I'm going to try and collect some details, but I propose a singular takeaway: LET'S STOP CALLING THINGS "BAGATELLE".  Please?  Bagatelle is a toy home pinball game, it's a musical number, it's a literal TRIFLE synonym, it's a billiard board, it's an antique pin board, it's enough things.   Let's be more specific.

Quick summary of the styles I'm interested in:

9-hole bagatelle / English Bagatelle:  long and thin tables where you shoot from one end to pocket balls in the 9 shallow holes on the playfield.  These tables come up for sale somewhat regularly in the UK, and the folding versions come up occasionally in USA.  You don't often see it referenced as "9-hole bagatelle" but I am calling it that because it's explicitly descriptive.
My entry on 9-hole English bagatelle

Pin Bagatelle / French bagatelle / Parisian bagatelle / Russian Bagatelle / cockamaroo: a slanted table where balls are shot up a channel and then fall down through pins/pegs.  Full-sized tables of this type seem to be very rare / obscure, with smaller toy-sized versions being rather common.  Features like shooting method, playfield gimmicks, and score holes vary, and I use "pin bagatelle" as an overarching category covering these variants.
My entry on pin bagatelle / French bagatelle

Klondike Pool / Tivoli Table / American Bagatelle / Manhattan: very similar to other pin bagatelles, except it employs a holes and a trough system to delivery the balls to the front.  Pretty obscure, but at least some copies are known to exist.  Late 19th century, and primarily American.
My entry on pin bagatelles includes a section on Klondike Pool

Japanese Rolling Ball / Tamakorogashi (玉ころがし) / Billard Japonais / Japanese Billiards: a long table like 9-hole bagatelle, but with holes arranged in rows and given a larger range of point values.  Typically the end of the table is rounded, but sometimes it is rectangular.  No cue is used, balls are rolled by hand.  Many home-made ones exist due to their ease of construction, especially in parts of Europe where it still has popularity as a fair game.
My entry on Japanese Rolling Ball

Pigeon Hole / Trou Madam / Parepa:  has holes to shoot through at one end.  Many 9-hole tables also had an add-on to make it a pigeon-hole table.  Dedicated tables of this type are very rare / obscure, especially the angled Parepa tables.  Pigeon-hole is more often played on English Bagatelle tables by inserting a wooden bridge.
The dedicated Pigeon Hole tables have a trough under the playfield that returns the balls to the front of the table, same as bar billiards.

My entry on pigeon hole / trou madam / bar billiards

1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog

Most billiard tables can be converted to a table like this by adding a wooden arch made to fit across the narrow cross-section of the playfield.  The game Trou Madam, dating to the 16th century, can have arches like this, and games like Mississippi are played in this manner.

Carombolette:  a variant of pigeon-hole that adds a pin-bagatelle feature on the other side of the gates.  These are very rare / obscure.  The stopper pictured below would allow the table to be played purely as a pigeon hole table.
My entry on carombolette

Bar billiards / Jenny Lind / Russian Billiards: Balls are shot from the front and into holes which channel the balls back to the front of the table.  Played with "skittles" (wooden pieces) on the playfield to avoid.  Common, still made and played today.
My entry on bar billiards
some videos on bar billiards

Jenny Lind Table - holes in the table direct balls to trough at the front
1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog 

Some other table games:

Toupie Hollandaise: no strong connection to billiards or bagatelle, but I'm including because people often lump these in with antique bagatelles.  It has skittles on a flat playfield, to be knocked over by a spinning top.  Also exists as a children's versions.
My entry on Toupie Hollandaise

Bowling Naco:  balls are rolled down and their angle modified by changing the shooter's angle.  Exists as a large parlor game, very popular in children's toys, and also exists as coin-op games.  Including here because it was made into a coin-op game in the 1930s around the time when pin bagatelle went coin-op too.