Chronicles and characters of the stock exchange

by of the Bank of England John Francis

It is almost impossible to describe the many iniquities, the household desolation, the public fraud, and the private mischief, which resulted from insuring. Wives committed domestic treachery; sons and daughters ran through their portions; merchants risked the gains of honorable trade. “My whole house,” wrote one, “was infected with the lottery mania, from the head of it down to my kitchen-maid and post-boy, who have both pawned some of their rags that they might put themselves in fortune’s way.” The passions and prejudices of the sex were appealed to. Lovers were to strew their paths with roses; husbands were plentifully promised, and beautiful children were to adorn their homes through the lottery. And all these glories were promised when Adam Smith declared, as an incontrovertible fact, that the world never had, and never would, see a fair lottery. So great were the charms of insuring, while the chances were so small, that respectable tradesmen, in defiance of the law, met for this illegal purpose, on the following day to that on which some of their body had been taken handcuffed before a magistrate. The agents were spread in every country village, and the possession of a prize was an absolute curse to the community. Its effects were witnessed alike in the shock it gave to industry, and the love of gambling it spread among the people. It is due to those whose voices were lifted up against these abominations to say, that their appeals to the good feeling of the government were incessant; but the state replied in that language which is so unanswerable when held by a firm government, that the necessities of the state overbalanced the evils of the lottery.

Nor could ignorance be pleaded of its fatal effects. The domestics of the senators themselves purchased shares with their masters’ money; and members of the lower and upper house were unable to resist the fascinations of the game they condemned. The most subtle language was not wanting to support the cause. Scripture was used to defend it; and as the Bible was perverted by the supporters of the slave-trade, and lately by the discoverers of the virtues of chloroform, so was it now wrested to prove the antiquity and sanctity of lotteries. “By lot,” they said, “it was determined which of the goats should be offered to Aaron. By lot the land of Canaan was divided. By lot Saul was marked out for the kingdom. By lot Jonah was discovered to be the cause of the storm.”

There are many incidents, which, recorded in contemporary annals, have been either overlooked or disregarded as insignificant. There is, however, nothing insignificant connected with so important a topic, and nothing ought to be overlooked on an evil which has eaten to the very heart of society, and which may again be used by some unscrupulous minister for some unscrupulous purpose. The declaration of Sir Samuel Romilly, that “whenever the House voted a lottery, they voted that the deserving should become depraved,” with the additional assertion, that “the crimes committed would be chiefly bought off by the paltry gain to the state coffers,” was entirely disregarded.

Let it be remembered that a chancellor declared “he could not see that lotteries led to gambling,”—that though the Corporation of London presented an earnest petition for their abolition, as injurious to commerce and injurious to individuals,—that though Lord Mansfield said the state exhibited the temptation and then punished for the crime to which it tempted,—that though, on one occasion, out of twenty-two convicts who left the country, eighteen commenced their career with insuring,—that though forged notes were encouraged from the carelessness with which lottery-office keepers received and passed them,—that though it was iterated and reiterated that no circumstances conduced so much to make bad wives and bad husbands, bad children and bad servants,—that though men threw themselves into the river from the infatuation of their wives,—though the plate of respectable families was pledged to assist the mania,—that though the poor-rates were increased, and the consumption of excisable articles diminished, during the drawing,—that though the gambling and lottery transactions of one individual only were productive of from ten to fifteen suicides annually,—that though half a million sterling yearly came from metropolitan servants,—that though four hundred fraudulent lottery-offices were in London alone,—that though no revenue was ever collected at so great an expense to the people,—that though families pawned every thing they had, sold the duplicates, and were reduced to poverty,—that though women forgot the sanctities of their sex,—that though the parishes were crowded with applicants who had reduced themselves by insurances,—that though perjury was common, and small annuitants squandered their resources,—that although all these pictures were drawn, and statements made, so publicly and so prominently that they could not fail to reach even the obtuse ears of a dominant ministry,—yet it was not until 1826 that the evil was abolished. A similar pressure may recall the evil. It is of no importance to argue that lotteries are forbidden, and that the morals and the minds of the people are more regarded. Lotteries have been repeatedly forbidden, but they have been invariably renewed when the coffers of the state were low; and the morals of the people are a minor point compared with the balance-sheet of the nation.

The melancholy history was occasionally enlivened by episodes, which sometimes arose from the humor, and sometimes from the sufferings of the populace. It is recorded as a fact, that, to procure the aid of the blind deity, a woman to whom a ticket had been presented caused a petition to be put up in church, in the following words:—“The prayers of the congregation are desired for the success of a person engaged in a new undertaking”; a singular contrast to others, who sought the midnight gloom of a church-yard to secure them the good fortune so eagerly craved. Romantic incidents often checkered the history. Old bureaus with secret drawers, containing the magic papers which led to an almost magic fortune, were purchased of brokers, or descended as heirlooms.

The evils in country places were more vividly impressed on the mind from the smallness of the population. In a village near town, a benefit-club for the support of aged and infirm persons existed for many years. Among the members was one who, in trying his luck, gained £3,000. The effect was feverish and fatal to the peace of the little community. The society formed to nourish the sick and clothe the needy, was converted into a lottery-club. The quiet village, which had hitherto vegetated in blessed peacefulness, rang with the sound of prizes, sixteenths, and insurances. People carried their furniture to the pawnbrokers, while others took their bedclothes in the depth of winter to the same source. The money thus procured was thrown away upon lotteries; and the prize of £3,000 was destructive to the happiness of the place.

Up to the year 1780, although these many evils were well known, insurances, and every species of gambling connected with the lottery, were legal. But the malady grew so violent, that, after much urging, a step was taken in the right direction. Insurances were declared illegal, and prohibited under very heavy penalties. So many, however, were imprisoned,—and perjury was not wanting for the sake of the penalty,—that some check was necessary. A law, therefore, was made, preventing any one from suing save the Attorney-General; and some idea may be formed of the extent of the evil from the fact, that, between 1793 and 1802, upwards of one thousand were punished with imprisonment. But the determination to insure surpassed the determination to punish. The officers of government were absolutely defied. Blood, in defence of that which the law declared illegal, was freely shed. So organized was the system, that two thousand clerks, and seven thousand five hundred persons known as “Morocco men,” with a numerous staff of armed ruffians, were attached to the insurance-offices. Committees were held three times a week; measures were invented to defeat the magistrates; money to an enormous extent was used to bribe the constabulary; while to those who refused to be bribed, a bold and insolent defiance was offered, with threats, which the officers well knew would be executed at the risk, or even the certain sacrifice, of life.

In 1805, Parliament again took cognizance of the evil. The reiterated declarations of the press, the repeated assertion of members of the senate, the universal voice of the country, coupled with the notorious fact, that crime continued to follow the system, compelled government to appoint a committee of the House to report upon it. The attendance of all who could give any information upon the subject was required, and a volume of evidence printed, which, though it must have opened the eyes, could not open the hearts, of the ministers.

Time, instead of softening or subduing the misery, had extended its ramifications into the highest, as it once had been confined to the lowest, society. The middle class—ordinarily supposed to be freest from vice—had gradually succumbed. The penniless miscreant of one day became the opulent gambler of the next; and the drawing of the lotteries might be marked by the aspect of the pawnbrokers’ shops, which overflowed with the goods of the laborer, with the ornaments of the middle class, and with the jewels of the rich. Servants went to distant places with the purloined property of their masters, pledged it, and, destroying the tickets, insured in the lottery. Manufacturers discharged those workmen who could not resist the temptation. During the drawing of the prizes less labor was done by the artisans. Housekeepers of the lower order were unable to pay their taxes; money was begged from benevolent societies; and men, pretending they were penniless, were fed and housed by the parish while embarking in these chimerical schemes. Felons, on the morning of an ignominious death, named lotteries as the first cause; and often, if a dream pointed to a particular number, crimes were committed to procure it, which led to transportation instead of fortune. Individuals presented themselves to insure, with such unequivocal marks of poverty in their appearance, that even the office-keepers refused their money; and yet, such was the indefatigable love of adventure, that many would come in at one door as fast as they were shown out at the other.

“When I have caught a great many in a room together,” said one witness, “I have found most of them poor women, and in their pockets twenty or thirty, and even sixty, duplicates on one person. Their pillows, their bolsters, their very clothes, were pledged, till they were almost naked.”