England in the Days of Old

State Lotteries

For more than two-and-a-half centuries state lotteries were popular in this country. They were imported into England from the continent; prior to being known here they were established in Italy, and most probably they came to us from that country.

An announcement of the first English lottery was made in 1566, and it stated that it would consist of forty-thousand lots or shares at ten shillings each. The prizes, many and valuable, included money, plate, and certain sorts of merchandise. The winner of the greatest and most excellent prize was entitled to receive “the value of five thousand poundes sterling, that is to say, three thousande poundes in ready money, seven hundred poundes in plate, gilte and white, and the reste in good tapisserie meete of hangings and other covertures, and certain sortes of good linen cloth.” Tapisserie and good linen cloth figure in several of the prizes, or to give the spelling of the announcement, prices. A large number of small money prizes were offered, including ten thousand at fifteen shillings each, and nine thousand four hundred and eighteen at fourteen shillings each.

The object of the lottery was to raise money to repair the harbours and to carry out other useful works. Although the undertaking was for an excellent purpose, and the prizes tempting, the sale of the tickets was slow, and special inducements were made by Queen Elizabeth to persons taking shares. Persons who “adventured money in this lottery” might visit several of the more important towns in “the Realme of Englande, and Dublyn and Waterforde in the Realm of Irelande,” and there remain for seven days without any molestation or arrest of them for any manner of offence saving treason, murder, pyracie, or any other felonie, or for breach of her Majesties peace during the time of her coming abiding or returne. Doubtless these conditions would induce many to take shares. Public bodies as well as private persons invested money in lottery tickets. Not so much as a matter of choice as to comply with the urgent wishes of the queen and her advisers. The public had little taste for the lottery, but the leading people in the land were almost compelled to take shares, and the same may be said of chief cities and towns. In the city records of Winchester for example, under the year 1566, it is stated: – “Taken out of the Coffer the sum of £10 towards the next drawen of the lottery.” On the 30th July, 1568, is another entry as follows: – “That £3 be taken out of the Coffers of the cytie and be put into the lottery, and so muche money as shall make up evyn lotts with those that are contrybuting of the cytie, so that it passed not 10s.”

The eventful day arrived after long waiting for commencing the drawing of the lottery. The place selected for the purpose was at the west door of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Operations were commenced in 1569, on January 11th, and continued day and night until May 6th.

Some years passed before another state lottery took place. It is believed that one noticed by Stow in his “Annales,” occurring in 1585, was the second. “A lotterie,” chronicles Stow, “for marvellous, rich, and beautiful armour was begunne to be drawne at London in S. Paules Churchyard, at the great West gate (a house of timber and board being there erected for that purpose) on S. Peter’s Day in the morning, which lotteries continued in drawing day and night, for the space of two or three dayes.”

Our first two Stuart kings do not appear to have employed the lottery as a means of raising money. James I. granted a lotterie in favour of the colony of Virginia. The prizes consisted of pieces of plate. It was drawn in a house built for the purpose near the West end of St. Paul’s. The drawing commenced on the 29th June, and was completed by 20th July, 1612. It is said that a poor tailor won the first prize, viz. “foure thousand Crownes in fayre plate,” and that it was conveyed to his humble home in a stately style. The lottery gave general satisfaction, it was plainly and honestly conducted, and knights, esquires and leading citizens were present to check any attempt at cheating. During the reign of Charles I., in 1630, the earliest lottery for sums of money took place.

The Puritans do not seem to have had any decided aversion to obtaining money by means of the lottery. During the Commonwealth it was resorted to for getting rid of forfeited Irish estates.

At the restoration the real gaming spirit commenced and caused much misery and ruin. The lottery sheet was set up in many public places, and the Crown received a large revenue from this source. The financial arrangement of a lottery was simple, the state offered a certain sum of money to be repaid by a larger. We learn from Chambers’s “Book of Days,” that “The government gave £10 in prizes for every share taken, on an average. A great many blanks, or of prizes under £10 left of course, a surplus for the creation of a few magnificent prizes wherewith to attract the unwary public.” It was customary for city firms known as lottery-office-keepers to contract for the lottery, and they always paid more than £10 per share, usually £16 was paid, which left the government a handsome profit. The contractors disposed of the tickets to the public for £20 to £22 each. The shares were frequently divided by the contractors into halves, quarters, eights, and sixteenths, and this was done at advanced prices. It was out of the clients for aliquot parts that the lottery-office-keepers reaped a heavy harvest. They were men who understood the art of advertising, and used pictures, poetry, and prose in a most effective manner. Our own collections of lottery puffs is curious and interesting. Some very good examples are reproduced in “A History of English Lotteries,” by John Ashton, and published by the Leadenhall Press, London, in 1893.

It is related that one firm of lottery ticket contractors gave an old woman fifty pounds a year to join them as a nominal partner on account of her name being Goodluck.

We have stated that at the commencement of lotteries they were drawn near St. Paul’s, subsequently the City Guildhall was the place, and later Cooper’s Hall, Basinghall Street, was used for this purpose. Before the day appointed for the drawing of a lottery, public preparations had been made for it at Somerset House. Each lottery ticket had a counterpart and a counterfoil, and when the issue of the tickets was complete, an announcement was made, and a day fixed for the counterparts of the tickets to be sealed up in a box, and any ticket-holder might attend and see that his ticket was included with others in a box, and it was placed in a strong box and locked up with seven keys, then sealed with seven seals. Two other boxes, locked and sealed as the one with tickets, contained the prize tickets and blanks. These were removed with ceremony to the place of drawing. Four prancing horses would draw, on their own sledges, the wheels of fortune, each of which were about six feet in diameter. By their side galloped a detachment of Horse Guards. Arrived at their destination, the great wheels were placed at each end of a long table, where the managers of the lottery took their seats. With care the tickets were emptied into the wheels, and finally they were set in motion. Near each wheel stood a boy, usually from the Blue-Coat School. Simultaneously the lads put into the wheels their hands, each drawing a paper out. These they hold up, and an officer, called the proclaimer, calls out in a loud voice the number, say sixty! another responds a prize or blank, as the case may be, and the drawing thus proceeds until it is finished, often a long and tedious piece of work. If even a blank is first drawn, the owner of the ticket received a prize of a thousand pounds, and a similar sum was won by the owner of the last ticket drawn. The boys were well rewarded for their trouble, and on the whole the lotteries appear to have been fairly conducted.

We give a picture of a pageant-like machine, used in London to advertise the last state lottery. The artist by whom it was drawn wrote an entertaining letter respecting it. “As I was walking up Holborn on the 9th of October, 1826,” he says, “I saw a strange vehicle moving slowly on, and when I came up to it, found a machine, perhaps from twenty to thirty feet high, of an octagon shape, covered all over with lottery papers of various colours. It had a broad brass band round the bottom, and moved on a pivot; it had a very imposing effect. The driver and the horse seemed as dull as though they were attending a solemn funeral, whilst the different shopkeepers came to the doors and laughed; some of the people passing and repassing read the bills that were pasted on it, as if they had never read one before, others stationed themselves to look at it as long as it was in sight. It entered Monmouth Street, that den of filth and rags, where so great a number of young urchins gathered together in a few minutes as to be astonishing. There being an empty chair behind, one of them seated himself in it, and rode backwards; another said, ‘let’s have a stone through it,’ and a third cried ‘let’s sludge it.’ This was no sooner proposed than they threw stones, oyster shells, and dirt, and burst several of the sheets; this attack brought the driver from his seat, and he was obliged to walk by the side of his machine up the foul street which his show canvassed, halting now and then to threaten the boys who still followed and threw. I made a sketch, and left the scene.”

Powerful protests were made in parliament against the immorality of the lottery. It took a long time to bring those in office to a sense of their duty. The immense profits they yielded were extremely useful for state purposes. Mr. Parnell hit hard the men in power, and it was he who suggested that the following epitaph be inscribed on the tomb of a Chancellor of the Exchequer: —

On Wednesday, 18th October, 1826, the last state lottery was drawn in England, and it will not be without interest to reproduce from a London newspaper a report of the closing proceedings. “Yesterday afternoon,” it is recorded, “at about half past six o’clock, that old servant of the State, the Lottery, breathed its last, having for a long period of years, ever since the days of Queen Anne, contributed largely towards the public revenue of the country. This event took place at Cooper’s Hall, Basinghall Street; and, such was the anxiety on the part of the public to witness the last drawing of the lottery, that great numbers of persons were attracted to the spot, independently of those who had an interest in the proceedings. The gallery of the Cooper’s Hall was crowded to excess long before the period fixed for the drawing (five o’clock), and the utmost anxiety was felt by those who had shares in the lottery, for the arrival of the appointed hour. The annihilation of lotteries, it will be recollected was determined upon in the session of Parliament before last; and thus, a source of revenue bringing into the treasury the sums of £250,000 and £300,000 per annum, will be dried up.

This determination on the part of the legislature is hailed, by the greatest portion of the public, with joy, as it will put an end to a system which many believe to have fostered and encouraged the late speculations, the effects of which have been and are still severely felt. A deficiency in the public revenue, to the extent of £250,000 annually, will occur, however, in the consequence of this annihilation of lotteries, and it must remain for those who have strenuously supported the putting a stop to lotteries, to provide for the deficiency.

Although that which ended yesterday was the last, if we are informed correctly, the lottery-office keepers have been left with a great number of tickets remaining on their hands – a pretty strong proof that the public, in general, have now no relish for these schemes.”

The drawing of the lottery commenced shortly after five o’clock, and ended at twenty minutes past six, so it did not take long to complete the last state lottery in England.

Those most interested in lotteries did not let them die without trying to prove their value to the public and the state. Bish, who conducted an extensive business in tickets, issued an address as follows: —

“At the present moment, when so many of the comforts of the poorer classes are more or less liable to taxation, it may surely be a question whether the abolition of lotteries, by which the State was a gainer of nearly half a million per annum, be, or be not, a wise measure!

’Tis true that, as they were formerly conducted, the system was fraught with some evil. Insurances were allowed upon the fate of numbers through protracted drawings; and, as the insurances could be effected for very small sums, those who could ill afford loss, imbibed a spirit of gambling, which the legislature, very wisely, most effectually prevented, by adopting, in the year 1809, the present improved mode of deciding the whole lottery in one day.

As the present conducted, the lottery is a voluntary tax, contributed to only by those who can afford it, and collected without trouble or expense; one by which many branches of the revenue are considerably aided, and by means of which hundreds of persons find employment. The wisdom of those, who at this time resign the income produced by it, adds to the number of the unemployed, may, as I have observed in a former address, surely be questioned.

Mr. Pitt, whose ability on matters of financial arrangements few will question, and whose morality was proverbial, would not, I am bold to say, have yielded to the outcry against a tax, the continuing of which would have enabled him to let the labourer drink his humble beverage at a reduced price, or the industrious artisan to pursue his occupation by a cheaper light. But we live in other times – in the age of improvement! To stake patrimonal estates at hazard or écarté, in the purlieus of St. James’s, is merely amusement, but to purchase a ticket in the lottery, by which a man may gain an estate at a trifling risk, is – immoral! Nay, within a few hours of the time I write, were not many of our nobility and senators, some of whom, I dare say, voted against lotteries, assembled, betting thousands upon a horse race?

In saying so much, it may be thought that I am somewhat presumptuous, or that I take a partial view of the case. It is, however, my honest opinion, abstracted from personal considerations, that the measure of abolishing lotteries is an unwise one, and, as such, I give it to that public, of which I have been, for many years, the highly favoured servant, and for whose patronage, though lotteries cease, my gratitude will ever continue.”

We will close our studies on this subject with a copy of an epitaph written in remembrance of these old-time institutions. It is as follows: —

Bear-Baiting

Few sports in England have been more popular than bear-baiting. Other forms of amusement waned before its attractions. The Sovereign, in the days of old, had as a member of his Court a Bearward, as well as a Chancellor. In and about London the sport was largely patronised, but it was by no means confined to the Metropolis; in all parts of the country bear-baitings were held. Fitzstephen, a monk of Canterbury, who lived in the reign of Henry II., in his description of London, relates that in the forenoon of every holy day during the winter season, the youthful Londoners were amused with the baiting of bears and other animals. He says the bears were full grown.

Edward III., in his proclamation, includes bear-baiting amongst “dishonest, trivial, and useless games.” The proclamation does not appear to have had any lasting effect on the public as regards bear-baiting. The diversion increased in popularity.

Southwark was a popular place for baiting animals, and Sunday the usual day for the amusement. Stow has several notes bearing on this theme. In respect to charges to witness the sport, he tells us “those who go to the Paris Garden, the Belle Sauvage, the Theatre, to behold bear-baiting, interludes, or fence-play, must not account (i. e., reckon on) any pleasant spectacle unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffold, and a third for quiet standing.” We learn from Stow that at Southwark were two bear-gardens, the old and the new; places wherein were kept bears, bulls, and other beasts to be baited; as also mastiffs in their several kennels were there nourished to bait them. These bears and other beasts were baited in plots of ground scaffolded round for the beholders to stand safe. Stow condemns the foulness of these rude sights, and says the money idly thrown away upon them might have been given to the poor.