Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

ing on the same subject was also for the first time made public:

ORDER at GENERAL MEETING.

A PLAN OF RULES AND REGULATIONS to be observed in order to prevent the Boys committing Frauds, &c., in the Drawing of the Lottery, agreeable to Directions received by Mr. Johnson on Tuesday the 16th of January 1776, from the Lords of the TREASURY.

THAT

HAT ten Managers be always on the Roll at Guildhall, two of whom are to be conveniently placed opposite the two Boys at the Wheels, in order to observe that they strictly conform themselves to the Rules and Orders directed by the Committee at Guildhall, on Tuesday, December 12, 1775.

TH

`HAT it be requested of the TREASURER OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL not to make known who are the twelve Boys nominated for drawing the Lottery till the morning the Drawing begins; which said Boys are all to attend every Day, and the two who are to go on Duty at the Wheels are to be taken promiscuously from amongst the whole Number by either of the Secretaries, without observing any regular Course or Order; so that no Boy shall know when it will be his turn to go to either Wheel.

THIS METHOD, though attended with considerable additional Expense, by the extra Attendance of two Managers and six Boys, will, it is presumed, effectually prevent any Attempt being made to corrupt or bribe any of the Boys to commit the Fraud practised in the last Lottery.

In July 1778 there was tried before Lord Mansfield at Guildhall a case wherein a merchant was plaintiff and a lottery-office keeper defendant. The action was for the purpose of recovering damages against the office-keeper for suffering plaintiff's apprentice, a youth, to insure during the drawing of the last lottery, contrary to the statute; whereby the lad lost a considerable sum, the property of his master. The jury, without leaving their box, gave a verdict for the plaintiff, and the judge ordered the defendant to pay £500 penalty and be imprisoned for three months. During the same year, Parliament having dis-, cussed the evil of insuring, and the mischievous subdivision of the shares of tickets, passed an Act for the regulation of lottery offices, by which it was enacted that every office

keeper should pay £50 for a licence, and give tangible security not to infringe any part of the Act; that no smaller portion of any ticket than a sixteenth should be disposed of under a penalty of £50; that any person disposing of goods or merchandise upon any chance relating to the drawing of any ticket should be liable to a fine of £20; and that all shares should be stamped at an office established under the said Act, the original tickets being kept at the office till after the drawing. Many other regulations were made in the same law, and in the following year the question was again subject of legislation; but notwithstanding all the efforts of the Commons, the ruinous practice of insuring was still conducted with dexterity and great profit by the office-keepers. This is one of their plans for evading the law :

:

MODE OF INSURANCE,

November 7, 1781.

WHICH continues the whole Time of drawing the Lottery, at

CARRICK'S STATE LOTTERY OFFICE, King's Arms, 72, Threadneedle Street. At one Guinea each NUMBERS are taken, to return three Twenty Pound Prizes, value Sixty Pounds, for every given Number that shall be drawn any Prize whatever above Twenty Pounds during the whole drawing.

*Numbers at half a Guinea to receive half the above.

And here is another of about the same date, which openly violates the spirit if not the letter of the law :

J.

:

COOK respectfully solicits the Public will favour the following incomparably advantageous plan with attention, by which upwards of thirty-two thousand Chances for obtaining a Prize (out of the forty-eight thousand Tickets) are given in one Policy.

POLICIES OF FIVE GUINEAS with three Numbers, with the first Number will gain

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Then follow the address and other tempting inducements. In 1781 an Act was passed to prevent the insurance of tickets by any method. The office-keepers continued to insure notwithstanding, and many prosecutions resulted; but as the profits were greater than the fines, business continued to run briskly. One man was in 1784 fined fifteen hundred pounds, and he brought an action in 1785 to recover the money from the sheriff who had levied the amount on his goods. The case was tried in the Court of King's Bench, and ended in an almost immediate nonsuit. In February 1793 the Commissioners of the Lottery, in order to abate insuring, determined that no persons should be suffered to take down numbers except the clerks of licensed offices known to the Commissioners. No slips were to be sent out; but the numbers were to be taken down by one clerk in one book; Steel's list of lottery numbers was to be abolished, and a recompense made for it; and the magistrates resolved to apprehend all suspicious persons who should be seen taking early numbers. Yet in 1796 there was a class of sharpers who took lottery insurances, and this gambling among the higher and middle classes was carried on to an extent exceeding all credibility, producing consequences to many private families of great worth and respectability, of the most distressing nature.

The insurance offices in London numbered over four hundred. To many of them persons were attached called Morocco men, who went from house to house among their customers, or attended in the back parlours of publichouses, for the purpose of making insurances. It was calculated that at these offices (exclusive of what was done at the licensed offices) insurances were made to the extent of eight hundred thousand pounds, in premiums, during the

Irish Lottery, and above one million during the English, upon which it was calculated that the insurers made from fifteen to twenty-five per cent. profit. This confederacy, during the English Lottery of the year 1796, supported about two thousand agents and clerks, and nearly eight thousand Morocco men, "including a considerable number of ruffians and bludgeon men, paid by a general association of the principal proprietors of the establishments, who regularly met in committee in a well-known public-house in Oxford Market, twice or thrice a week during the drawing of the lottery, for the purpose of concerting measures to defeat the exertions of the magistrates by forcibly resisting or bribing the officers of justice."

Lotteries were declared by the Parliamentary reports of 1807 to be inseparable from illegal insurances. The reports further state that "the Lottery is so radically vicious, that under no system of regulations which can be devised will it be possible for Parliament to adopt it as an efficient source of revenue, and at the same time divest it of all the evils and calamities of which it has hitherto been so baneful a source." Among these evils and calamities the Committees of Parliament enumerate that "idleness, dissipation, and poverty were increased,—the most sacred and confidential trusts were betrayed, — domestic comfort was destroyed, madness was often created, suicide itself was produced, and crimes subjecting the perpetrators of them to death were committed." Sir Nathaniel Conant, who in 1816 was chief magistrate of Bow Street, stated to a committee of the House of Commons that the Lottery was one of the predisposing causes by which the people of the metropolis were vitiated; that it led to theft, to supply losses and disappointments occasioned by speculating on its chances; and that illegal insurances continued to be effected. "There are," he says, "people in the background, who, having got forty or fifty thousand pounds by that, employ people of the lowest order, and give them a com

mission for what they bring; there is, a wheel within a wheel." Another magistrate giving evidence before the same committee, said, "It is a scandal to the Government, thus to excite people to practise the vice of gaming for the purpose of drawing a revenue from their ruin. It is an anomalous proceeding by law to declare gambling infamous; to hunt out petty gamblers in their recesses, and cast them into prison; and by law also to set up the giant gambling of the State Lottery, and encourage persons to resort to it by the most captivating devices which ingenuity uncontrolled by moral rectitude can invent." This evidence may be regarded as the ultimate cause of the suppression of lotteries, which might have dragged on an existence for a few more years had it not been for the atrocities of the insurance-mongers. We will now turn towards the closing scenes in this eventful drama.

Seldom was human ingenuity more exercised than in giving public notoriety to lottery schemes. The originators or proprietors of lotteries used to employ a number of persons, frequently of considerable literary ability and talent, to attract the public attention by verses, ingenious advertisements, and decoy paragraphs in the newspapers, engaging the attention of the readers by smart allusions to political topics or other matters of interest, which entrapped the unwary into lottery puffs. Thirteen thousand pounds was usually paid into the Exchequer for duties on these and other methods of advertising practised by the lottery people, and some of the agents spent as much as £20,000 in puffing and advertisements. Take the following as a specimen of the puffing which marked the later days of the Lottery :

Before the time of Sir Isaac Newton, various notions were entertained concerning colours. Plato said colour was a flame issuing from bodies, the Indians of America believed the same, and when any person read a letter they believed it spoke, and blessed the paper in proportion as they were moved by it. What emotions would the following billet

« AnteriorContinuar »