In 1713 Captain Robert Burton obtained a grant for land to the south of the State House on condition that he build on it within three years. He already owned a house in the northern part of the town which he had inherited from his father but apparently wanted to live closer to the harbour. He had begun to build on his new lot by May 1715 but sickness prompted him to write a will directing his wife to completely ‘finish, glaze and make fit for habitation the house which I have begun to build on my lott neare the Sessions House’ in the event of his death. He died less than a year later and it is evident that his widow carried out his instructions, for the grant did not revert to the Crown.

Thus, the building known as The Casino on east Water Street dates to 1716. Burton’s widow Esther married Thomas Smith who was living in this house and owned the wharf across the street when he died in 1742. In 1764 the aged Esther Smith gave the house, kitchen and lot to her granddaughter Esther, wife of George Ball. The widow Smith died a year later. Esther and George lived in the house and had at least one son, Alexander Forbes Ball. In 1768 they apparently mortgaged the property to George Forbes for £140, for in 1781 Forbes’ heirs sued the Balls in chancery court for the money. Neither George nor Esther left a will when they died in 1792 and 1796 respectively, and Alexander inherited the house.

Alexander Forbes Ball was a founding member of the Masonic Lodge in St George’s. He married widow Mary Augusta Hinson in May 1800 in St Anne’s Church, Southampton, and they had a son, Joseph, the following February. Mary Augusta died in 1807 and Alexander Ball never remarried. In the year that they married, his house was valued at £325 and his furniture and merchandise worth another £1,000. His fortunes steadily declined, however, and by 1813 his total net worth was only £582. In 1821 he was forced to mortgage his house to John Barr for £400 and three years later advertised it in the Bermuda Gazette, hoping that its ‘five rooms upstairs with closets, excellent kitchen, large cellar, tank and outhouses’ and the fact that it was enclosed with a substantial wall might attract a buyer. It did. Joseph Gwynn, merchant and keeper of the clock in the parish church, purchased the house in March 1824. He would enjoy it for little more than a year before his own rash actions tragically ended his life.

Gwynn’s son, Joseph Jr, was involved in a scuffle late in 1825, for which St George’s magistrate Dr Joseph Hunter sentenced him to a short jail term. The father became enraged and on the night of 6 December he set off for Hunter’s residence, armed with a pistol and dirk. Word travels quickly in a small town and Hunter was warned before Gwynn arrived, so he pretended to be out. The frustrated Gwynn set off for home in an angry mood. Just as he turned up Princess Street to go home, he saw his neighbour Henry Folger, whom he mistook for Hunter. Gwynn drew his pistol and fired it at point blank range, fatally wounding Folger.

The murder caused a sensation since it was the first killing of a Bermudian in 20 years. Gwynn, along with his two sons, Joseph Jr and Benjamin, was arrested and tried in May 1826. The court room in Hamilton was packed when the jury returned a guilty verdict against the elder Gwynn. The sons were acquitted for want of sufficient evidence.

Although Gwynn protested his innocence, claiming he never meant to kill either Hunter or Folger, the governor pronounced a death sentence and ordered that it be carried out on the site of the murder. A scaffold was duly erected near the corner of Duke of York Street and Princess Street and the Bermuda Gazette reported that at 11:25 in the morning Gwynn ‘with calmness and resignation . . . was launched into eternity’. After hanging for half an hour, the body was cut down.

Richard Cotter, a Royal Navy purser who claimed to be an eyewitness to the execution, adds a detail notably absent from the Bermuda Gazette account. Cotter related that the hangman, hired by the provost marshal for $100, was a mulatto man who accompanied Gwynn from the gaol in disguise dressed as a woman, and would only perform the execution after removing his gloves and mask.

The property of Gwynn, a felon, was forfeited to the Crown. The colony’s provost marshal auctioned it in June 1826, and it was purchased by William Tucker, the owner of Rose Hill, Reeve Court, Esten House and several other properties. In 1849 he sold it to James Mitchell, a grocer, who moved his family into the house. In 1861 Mitchell’s wife Eliza died, leaving him to raise six children with only the help of his sister-in-law who was living with the family. By 1882 James Mitchell had died and two of his daughters had moved to New York City.

Over the next four years Thomas W Foster tracked down and purchased all the individual shares in the house from Mitchell’s heirs, for a total of £530. Foster ran a liquor store, tavern and hotel until 1920, when he sold The Casino to Reginald H Higinbothom, who expanded the business by adding a three-storey wing to the old house along One Gun Alley. The property acquired the name Casino about this time, an Italian name then denoting a place for dancing and music as well as gambling. After it had passed through a number of hands, the Bermuda Historical Monuments Trust acquired The Casino in 1966. Since 1980 the Jehovah’s Witnesses have leased the building and transformed the former tavern into a place of worship.

The original western portion of the building, built around 1716, is typical of an 18th century merchant’s house, with living quarters above and storage space in the high-ceilinged cellars below. The house was conveniently located near the waterfront. The asymmetry of the windows predates the arrival of Georgian architecture. The west gable end is buttressed by a massive old chimney, while at the eastern end, apparently a one room extension to an older core, builders added a finely executed Flemish gable. The Casino’s side steps are typical for the town, although the porch roof is of recent vintage. The building bears a striking resemblance to Tucker House and gives a good idea of what that building probably looked like when Thomas Smith built it around 1753 and before President Henry Tucker made several additions.