It is noticeable that though only one ticket was spoken of in the police case, the secret instructions refer to three. It is likely that if it had been known that more than one had been tampered with, a general unpleasantness would have resulted, and the whole of the drawing been declared null and void. As it was, there was some difficulty in keeping the matter within bounds; and the trifling proportion of the attempted cheat, as compared with the magnitude of the general issue, was the strong point of the lottery managers. The exposure of the attempted, and so far as two tickets were concerned apparently successful, fraud, would have led to a vast amount of trouble and expense, and would have considerably added to the unpopularity of lotteries—a feeling which, as it was, made itself now and again very manifest. Anyhow the secret was kept for over sixty years, as it was never divulged until the general dissolution of the lottery system in 1826, when the following on the same subject was also for the first time made public:—

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 discussed 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:—

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

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 public-houses, 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 commission 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:—

Here is another of the same ingenious description, which kept the trap constantly baited for the unsuspecting:—

The most stupendous efforts were made to promote the success of the last lottery, which, however, languished sadly. The price of tickets was arbitrarily raised, to induce a belief that they were in great demand, “at the very moment when,” says Hone, writing immediately afterwards, “their sale was notoriously at a stand; and the lagging attention of the public of the metropolis was endeavoured to be quickened by all sorts of stratagems to the 18th of July, as the very last chance that would occur in England of gaining ‘Six 30,000l. besides other Capitals,’ which it was positively affirmed were ‘all to be drawn’ on that fatal day.” Besides the dispersion of innumerable bills and aspersions on Government for extinguishing the Lottery, those most interested in its preservation caused London and the suburbs to be paraded by a most magnificent procession, in which was a band of music which played to attract attention, and then a man stepped forward, and ringing a bell, announced the death of the Lottery. Cartloads of bills were showered down areas and thrust under doors, and no effort was spared to make the end crown the work of centuries.

Chief among the office-keepers of the period was a Mr T. Bish—one of whose earlier prospectuses we present in exact facsimile—who showered millions of bills and miles of doggerel verse upon London just before the final draw took place. He had been a considerable adept in the art of puffing by means of the mock news-paragraphs to which reference has just been made, one of his best being that which follows:—

Facsimile of advertisement

It would be impossible here to give the many specimens which have been preserved of Bish’s handiwork just before the close of the lotteries, but from an embarras de richesses we select the following:—

At the back of the bill were some verses after the style of the “Cajolery Duet.” This is one of them:—

Although the last lottery was expected to take place on the 18th of July, it was not until the 18th of October that the closing scene in an eventful history took place. For this Bish, among many other handbills, produced the following:—

Advertisements in the newspapers were not, however, plentiful. The office-keepers seemed to prefer the pomp and circumstance of processions and bands and funeral speeches, to the cold respectability which was just then part of the newspaper system. Bish had many eccentric illustrations in his handbills, and some of his verses went beyond even the bounds of eccentricity. As the eventful day approached, the efforts in the handbill line redoubled, and people were provided with waste paper for an indefinite period; but there was little to notice in the columns of any of the chief journals. On October 7, 1826, a public notice appeared on the front page of the Times, in company with the advertisements of Swift and Eyton, two office-keepers; but whether it was placed there by order of the “powers that be,” or was in the interests of the dealers, we must leave our readers to judge for themselves. The latter seems most probable:—

Hazard was the rather appropriate name of another promoter whose advertisements are published just at this time; but they are, as are the others, small and unpretentious when in the newspapers, and are only noticeable as records of the finishing days of the great State Lottery. In the Times of October 13 there is this notice, which was repeated on the 16th and 17th, on the last-named date having the word “to-morrow” inserted instead of “next Wednesday:”—

On the day before the drawing, the advertisements in the Times showed that great apathy existed, and that the tickets had not gone off well, as the office-keepers had evidently many yet left on hand. Even the advertisements have a dispirited appearance:—

It is almost evident that the Lottery was “played out” on its own merits, and that the interference of Parliament only hastened the end so far as concerns the important events. Another firm of contractors put forth a final appeal thus:—

On the fatal day itself the only noticeable advertisement in the Times is that of Bish, which is the same as had been running for some little time, and which on the 18th of October 1826, with the word “this day,” instead of what had appeared before, stood thus, a specimen of the last newspaper appeal in regard to a forthcoming State lottery:—

The following is the record of the last drawing, as published in the Thursday’s papers: “Yesterday afternoon, 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 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 on 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 far 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, however, be the consequence of the 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 concourse of persons in Basinghall Street was very great; indeed, the street was almost impassable, and everybody seemed desirous of ascertaining the fortunate numbers. In the gallery the greatest interest was excited, as the various prizes were drawn from the wheel; and as soon as a numbered ticket was drawn from the number wheel, every one looked with anxiety to his share, in order to ascertain if Fortune smiled on him. Only one instance occurred where a prize was drawn and a number held by any individual present. The fortunate person was a little man, who no sooner had learned that his number was a grand prize, than he buttoned up his coat, and coolly walked off without uttering a word. As the drawing proceeded disappointment began to succeed the hopes indulged by those who were present. On their entrance to the hall every face wore a cheerful appearance; but on the termination of the drawing a strong contrast was exhibited, and the features of each were strongly marked with dissatisfaction. The drawing commenced shortly after five o’clock, and ended at twenty minutes past six. The doors of the various lottery offices were also surrounded by persons awaiting the issue of the drawing.”

The Times, in a short leader—short and few were the leaders in the Times of that day—published on the Thursday, says: “Yesterday terminated the lotteries in this country—may we say for ever? We know not. Such a result will depend upon the wants of Government, and the morality of its ministers. However, we rejoice at their suspension,—a suspension which we hope we have in some degree assisted in effecting,—yet rejoice with fear. Looking at the Stock Exchange, at the time bargains, and at all the iniquities practised there, we have only to hope that the place of the lotteries may not be supplied by some more mischievous system of knavery. Time was when all the robberies were committed on the king’s highway. The lighting, watching, and general improvement of our roads, have nearly put an end to this practice; but housebreaking has unfortunately taken its place! And yet the people of England is not a gambling people like the French, as is evident from the fate of the last lottery. We have heard that hardly half the tickets were sold; from which it is evident, that the spirit of lottery-gambling was extinct before the system; and if that spirit had not been kept alive by incessant stimuli, it would have expired long ago.”

It may be as well to mention, though it is generally known, that an Act of the 9th and 10th Vict. was passed for legalising Art Union Lotteries within certain limits and under certain conditions. Though our chapter has run over its length, we can hardly conclude without quoting the wise words of Adam Smith on the subject of lotteries. “The chance of gain,” says he, “is by every man more or less overvalued, and the chance of loss is by most men undervalued. . . . The world neither ever saw, or ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery, or one in which the whole gain compensated the whole loss; because the undertaker could make nothing by it. In the State lotteries the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid by the original subscribers, and yet commonly sell in the market for twenty, thirty, and sometimes forty per cent. advance. The vain hope of gaining some of the greatest prizes is the sole cause of this demand. The soberest people scarce look upon it as a folly to pay a small sum for the chance of gaining ten or twenty thousand pounds; though they know that even that small sum is perhaps twenty or thirty per cent. more than the chance is worth. In a lottery in which no prize exceeds twenty pounds, though in other respects it approach much nearer to a perfectly fair one than the common State lotteries, there would not be the same demand for tickets. In order to have a better chance for some of the great prizes, some people purchase several tickets, and others small shares in a still greater number. There is not, however, a more certain proposition in mathematics, than that the more tickets you adventure upon the more likely you are to be a loser. Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer you approach to this certainty.” Though this was written in reference to a state of affairs long past, the lesson is not without value nowadays.

October 18, 1826, saw the last of the State lotteries, but it was long before the smaller fry were eradicated. Conducted very quietly at first, but after a while their promoters growing bolder, lotteries for clothes, furniture, and, especially at Christmas-time, for food and drink, were openly advertised under the title of “sweeps” up to comparatively recent times. A few police prosecutions about a dozen years back improved these relics of a past day off the face of the earth. There were, however, still left what were called “specs,” which violated both the Betting-House Act and the Lottery Act, and the promoters of the chief of them in turn suffered under the majesty of the law about the period of the raid on the commission agents referred to in a previous chapter. Under the guises of picture and circular sales these turf lotteries are still continued, an advertisement in a sporting paper of June 1874 giving an address in Glasgow, informing all those whom it most concerns that the “East End Circular” has for disposal

Then follows a list of names of people living in various parts of the kingdom who are empowered to sell the circulars. Within the past twelvemonth certain small papers which added to their circulation by the presentation of coupons entitling the holders to shares in lotteries for prizes of all descriptions, received solemn warning from the Home Office, and had to discontinue their projects. That this was wise, considering the innocence of the arrangement, we do not think; that it was not impartial, the notice from which we have just quoted proves. For the Lottery Act extends to Scotland, even if the Betting Act does not.[45]

CHAPTER XVII.
MATRIMONIAL ADVERTISEMENTS AND AGENCIES.

It will not be at all out of the way to assume that as long as the world has been populated it has possessed people anxious to get married. Marriage is the correct condition of life; indeed we have the best authority for regarding it as one of the principal reasons of our being, and so there is no need for wonder that many of the best-known customs of the ancients bear upon marital rites and festivities. Marriage comes in due course to the majority, male and female; but there are, naturally, those who have no desire for it, and again those who have to make effort to obtain it. There are various ways of exhibiting one’s wares and attractions, and chief among them comes the object of our attention—advertising. Of late years there seems, in addition to the ordinary courses open to advertisers, to have been special arrangements made on behalf of the unmatched, who are allowed to express their desires and recommendations free, gratis, for nothing, in the columns of certain cheap periodicals—the described being all beauty or virtue, or both, when not possessed of capital. Would-be lovers are not generally deficient in either particular when the circulating medium is thrown into the balance as well. So that by means of the weekly publications referred to, marriage seems a much better commercial arrangement than that mentioned by a modern author, who, speaking of the Babylonians, says that “Herodotus records one of their customs, which, whether in jest or earnest, he declares to be the wisest he ever heard of. This was their wife-auction, by which they managed to find husbands for all their young women. The greatest beauty was put up first, and knocked down to the highest bidder; then the next in the order of comeliness—and so on to the damsel who was equidistant between beauty and plainness, who was given away gratis. Then the least plain was put up, and knocked down to the gallant who would marry her for the smallest consideration,—and so on till even the plainest was got rid of to some cynical worthy who decidedly preferred lucre to looks. By transferring to the scale of the ill-favoured the prices paid for the fair, beauty was made to endow ugliness, and the rich man’s taste was the poor man’s gain.”

But in the representations of the wistful lovers who confide their secrets to certain editors, ugliness has no existence among the ladies, vice or laziness is unknown to the gentlemen, and money seems plentiful with both, so that it remains quite a mystery how any of the intending suitors have managed to evade Hymen for any length of time, so superior are they to the commonplace people whom we are in the habit of seeing settled down in sober domesticity. A writer in a miscellany a few years back catalogued a lot of the claimants for matrimony, first in the list being Sincere Polly, who describes herself as dark, high-spirited, and handsome; next is Evangelina, eighteen, handsome and accomplished, who will have £300 a year when of age; Fanny declares herself to be a sweet-tempered and pretty girl, just seventeen; Annie Everard endeavours to attract by her modesty in saying that she is eighteen, and not beautiful, only pretty; and Viola offers inducement in describing herself as seventeen, and Irish, merry, lively, and inclined to be stout. These ask for the carte-de-visite of a Captain Compass who advertised previously. Following these young and lovely females comes Blanche, who describes herself as a slight, graceful girl of eighteen, with dreamy violet eyes and golden rippling hair, shading a face of rare and delicate loveliness. She is a great admirer of soldiers, a lover of the chase, and all field sports. This enchanting creature is very anxious for Albert’s carte-de-visite. Who is Albert, and what has he done, that he of all men should be singled out to carry off this flower of creation? “But,” says the writer to whom we have referred, who seems quite unable to swallow the description, in which he is very different from ourselves, as we would never contradict a lady, “the morbid curiosity of the human mind goes a step farther, and seeks to picture Blanche—not the Blanche of Blanche’s vivid imagination, but Blanche herself. Two alternatives present themselves. She may be a stout little milliner in a Camden-town shop; or—horribile dictu!—a waggish cook, with a turned-up nose, underdone arms and cheeks to match. The ideal Blanche fades away as we contemplate these possibilities. We pity Albert. We hope he will not waste his hardly-earned money in the vanities of photography, and cordially wish him a comfortable married state with a more earthly maiden, now that this too celestial vision dies back into dream-land. There is but one young person who approaches the ideal Blanche; and she calls herself ‘Sparkling with Gems.’ She is (on her own authority, be it always understood) a young, pretty, and accomplished Irish girl, with blue eyes, pearly teeth, and a wealth of golden ringlets, who is considered very stylish and graceful-looking, is of a loving disposition, and will have an income in her own right, and she wishes for the carte-de-visite of a young gentleman, who must be tall, dark, and handsome, of good family and position, and either of the military or medical profession. ‘Kill or cure’ is this young lady’s principle in choosing a husband; but we should say that so attractive a bride, with a wealth of golden ringlets, an income in her own right, and what not, ought certainly to fall into the hands (or arms) of a dashing young officer, whose want of an income in his own right is generally the chief drawback from the amenities of his profession.” Constance is already possessed of £500 a year, and limits her hopes to a husband with £200 of income. But he must be fair, of the middle height, and nice-looking. Eunice has no money at all; but she has very dark hair and eyes, rosy complexion, and is domestic. Here again our cynic shows his scepticism: “Had the indefinite article been placed before the last word in her catalogue of qualities, the description would probably have been complete.” Poor Jane says: “Why should I become a nun against my wish, merely because my father wishes it? I suppose he wishes to get married again, and I am in his way. I can say without flattery that I am near twenty, have a very graceful figure, very handsome, and between the medium height, a first-class pianist, and capable of making any gentleman a good wife. I possess no money. I am a lady, very domestic, and am quite certain that I am worthy of a good husband.” Poor Jane! her notions of the descriptive are rather vague, and so are her ideas of what is a lady. But as we once knew a writer of stories for the periodical in which her description appears who considered it beneath the dignity of a gentleman to spell properly, Jane is, perhaps, quite right in her estimate of herself according to the code under which she was instructed.

Some of the gentlemen in this same catalogue deserve attention. As a rule, they seem to consider “proputty” the best qualification, though if other advantages are thrown in they will not be objected to. Let us pick out from the herd Gauntlet, who says that he is a gentleman of good standing in society, a widower, forty, but looks much younger, of middle height, highly respected in his own neighbourhood, and is possessed of upwards of £8000 at command; he wishes to meet with a lady younger than himself, and with means equal to his own. Then there is R. S., who has £100 a year, is of like opinion as to the proportion of money his bride ought to bring, and would like to become acquainted with a young lady of similar income, or one who has a talent for elocution or singing. Our author, after exhausting his list, admits that the young gentlemen who advertise in the penny journals are far less mercenary than the young ladies. “The latter betray quite a rapacity with regard to a good income, are very explicit about it, and put down in plain figures the precise sum which they think their charms are worth. By what means the acquaintanceship begun in these advertising columns is continued and completed we are unable to say. As a preliminary the editor kindly undertakes the charge of photographs; but of the steps by which the contracting parties advance to the goal of their wishes we know nothing. We should think that the proprietors of the journal ought to keep an attorney on the premises, to see that the gentlemen who offer £8000 are acting in good faith.” Had further inspection been given to the page in which these requisitions appear, the critic would have learned that, when second steps are taken, communication is made through a newspaper belonging to the same proprietary as the penny journal, and would have seen that “all advertisements must be prepaid.” But we are beginning at the wrong end, and must retrace our steps for the purpose of renewing acquaintance with our old friend Houghton, the father of English advertising, who, in his Collection of July 19, 1695, says:—