Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-03T04:33:17.762Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - ‘Publicity to a lottery is certainly necessary’: Thomas Bish and the culture of gambling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

John Strachan
Affiliation:
University of Sunderland
Get access

Summary

A world of words, tail foremost, where

Right – wrong – false – true – and foul – and fair

As in a lottery-wheel are shook.

P. B. Shelley, Peter Bell the Third (1819)

In evidence given to the Parliamentary Committee on the Laws relating to Lotteries on 7 April 1808, the lottery-office entrepreneur and indefatigable self-publicist Thomas Bish declared that ‘Publicity to a Lottery is certainly necessary’. This chapter addresses that publicity, focusing most particularly upon a fascinating but little-known moment in English social history: the final draw of the English State Lottery, which was held in October 1826. It also pays much attention to Bish himself, as the figure most associated with the lottery in the minds of the contemporary English public. The proprietor of lottery offices at Cornhill, Charing Cross and in several provincial cities, Bish became a figure of some fame and notoriety in the early part of the nineteenth century on account of his striking lottery puffs. Here I examine his promotional methods, contextualise them against the background of the increasing middle-class disapproval of lotteries which led to their eventual abolition, and discuss the satirical response to the abolition of the lottery, to Thomas Bish, and to the final draw – the ‘Last, the downright Last’ as S. T. Coleridge called it, a body of work to which such important Romantic period figures as Charles Lamb and Thomas Hood made significant contributions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×