With a very few exceptions all who are or have been proprietors of the Gambling Houses are also concerned in the fraudulent Insurance Offices; and have a number of Clerks employed during the drawing of the two Lotteries, who conduct the business without risk in counting-houses, where no insurances are taken, but to which books are carried, not only from all the different Offices in every part of the town, but also from the Morocco-Men; so called, from their going from door to door with a book covered with red leather for the purpose of taking insurances, and enticing the poor and the middle ranks to become adventurers.
Several of the Keepers of Insurance Offices, during the interval of the drawing of the English and Irish Lotteries have invented and set up private Lotteries, or Wheels, called by the nick-name of Little Go's, containing Blanks and Prizes, which are drawn for the purpose of establishing a ground for Insurance; the fever in the minds of the lower order of the people is thus kept up, in some measure, all the year round, and produces incalculable mischiefs; and hence the spirit of gambling becomes so rooted from habit, that no domestic distress, no consideration, arising either with the frauds that are practised, or the number of chances that are against them, will operate as a check upon their minds.
In spite of the high price of provisions, and of the care and attention of the Legislature in establishing severe checks and punishments for the purpose of preventing the evil of Lottery Insurances, these criminal agents feel no want of customers; their houses and offices are not only extremely numerous all over the Metropolis; but in general high-rented; exhibiting the appearance of considerable expence, and barricadoed in such a manner, with iron doors and other contrivances, as in many instances to defy the arm of the Law to reach them.
In tracing all the circumstances connected with this interesting subject, with a view to the discovery of the cause of the great encouragement which these Lottery Insurers receive, it appears that a considerable proportion of their emolument is derived from menial servants in general, all over the Metropolis; but particularly from the pampered male and female domestics in the houses of men of fashion and fortune; who are said, almost without a single exception, to be in the constant habit of insuring in the English and Irish Lotteries.
This class of menials, being in many instances cloathed as well as fed by their masters, have not the same calls upon them as labourers and mechanics, who must appropriate at least a part of their earnings to the purpose of obtaining both food and raiment.
With a spirit of gambling, rendered more ardent than prevails in vulgar life, from the example of their superiors, and from their idle and dissipated habits, these servants enter keenly into the Lottery business; and when ill luck attends them, it is but too well known that many are led, step by step, to that point where they lose sight of all moral principle; impelled by a desire to recover what they have lost, they are induced to raise money for that purpose, by selling or pawning the property of their masters, wherever it can be pilfered in a little way, without detection; till at length this species of peculation, by being rendered familiar to their minds, generally terminates in more atrocious crimes.
Upon a supposition that one hundred thousand families in the Metropolis keep two servants upon an average, and that one servant with another insures only to the extent of twenty-five shillings each, in the English, and the same in the Irish Lottery, the aggregate of the whole will amount to Half a Million Sterling.
Astonishing as this may appear at first view, it is believed that those who will minutely examine into the Lottery transactions of their servants, will find the calculation by no means exaggerated; and when to this are added the sums drawn from persons in the middle ranks of life, as well as from the numerous classes of labourers and artisans who have caught the mania; it ceases to be a matter of wonder, that so many Sharpers, Swindlers, and Cheats, find encouragement in this particular department.
If servants in general, who are under the control of masters, were prevented from following this abominable species of gambling; and if other expedients were adopted, which will be hereafter detailed, a large proportion of the present race of rogues and vagabonds who follow this infamous trade, would be compelled to become honest; and the poor would be shielded from the delusion which impels them to resort to this deceitful and fraudulent expedient; at the expence sometimes of pledging every article of household goods, as well as the last rag of their own, and their children's wearing apparel, not leaving even a single change of raiment!
This view of a very prominent and alarming evil, known to exist from a variety of facts well established and evinced, among others, by the pawnbrokers' shops overflowing with the goods of the labouring poor, during the drawing of the three Lotteries, ought to create a strong desire on the part of all masters of families, to exert their utmost endeavours to check this destructive propensity; and to prevent, as far as possible, those distresses and mischiefs which every person of humanity must deplore. The misery and loss of property which springs from this delusive source of iniquity, is certainly very far beyond any idea that can be formed of it by the common observer.[41]