Confusing passage...

[BobRoss]

"He taught me euchre, and after dividing London between us, I
taking the northern side and he the southern, we played for parish points."

Can anyone explain to me what this means? What are "parish points"?

Was London religiously divided around the early 1900's?

They were competing, figuratively speaking, for parishes perhaps?

[togre]

I don't have a complete answer for you, but I'm looking.

The entire passage is referring to the card game euchre. I've played it, but the terms he uses ("diving London", "parish points") are unfamiliar.

The best I can infer is that it is referring to a particular subset of rules or scoring for euchre and/or arranging the starting disposition of a game between two players.

I'm looking into it more.

Great question!

[WillyDJ]

Just as you can describe your place of residence by which suburb it's in, a well to do Englishman of the 19th century will reference which anglican parish he resides in.

So the narrator and artilleryman play for London using it's many parishes as tokens.

[Calidore]

So they're kind of playing Euchreopoly?

[hillwalker]

Presumably - most of the UK is still split into parishes for bureaucratic purposes. In local government the Parish Council is the lowest category of democratic constituency as it were - and many maps still clearly display parish boundaries as well as county boundaries.

H

[togre]

Just as you can describe your place of residence by which suburb it's in, a well to do Englishman of the 19th century will reference which anglican parish he resides in.

So the narrator and artilleryman play for London using it's many parishes as tokens.

Sweet! I'd searched and searched for an explanation. Nice to know what it means.