Chances of Tickets.
The State Lottery of 1751 seems to have encountered considerable opposition. There is a discouraging notice in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” on the 4th of July in that year, that “those inclined to become adventurers in the present lottery were cautioned in the papers to wait some time before they purchased tickets, whereby the jobbers would be disappointed of their market, and obliged to sell at a lower price. At the present rate of tickets the adventurer plays at 35 per cent. loss.”
In the next month, August, the “London Magazine” exhibited the following computation.
IN THE LOTTERY 1751, IT IS
| 69998 | to | 2 | or | 34999 | to | 1 | against a | £10000 | prize. |
| 69994 | to | 6 | or | 11665 | to | 1 | against a | 5000 | or upwards. |
| 69989 | to | 11 | or | 6363 | to | 1 | against a | 3000 | |
| 69981 | to | 19 | or | 3683 | to | 1 | against a | 2000 | |
| 69961 | to | 39 | or | 1794 | to | 1 | against a | 1000 | |
| 69920 | to | 80 | or | 874 | to | 1 | against a | 500 | |
| 69720 | to | 280 | or | 249 | to | 1 | against a | 100 | |
| 69300 | to | 700 | or | 99 | to | 1 | against a | 50 | |
| 60000 | to | 10000 | or | 6 | to | 1 | against a | 20 | or any prize. |
The writer says, I would beg the favour of all gentlemen, tradesmen, and others, to take the pains to explain to such as any way depend upon their judgment, that one must buy no less than seven tickets to have an even chance for any prize at all; that with only one ticket, it is six to one, and with half a ticket, twelve to one against any prize; and ninety-nine or a hundred to one that the prize, if it comes, will not be above fifty pounds; and no less than thirty-five thousand to one that the owner of a single ticket will not obtain one of the greatest prizes. No lottery is proper for persons of very small fortunes, to whom the loss of five or six pounds is of great consequence, besides the disturbance of their minds; much less is it advisable or desirable for either poor or rich to contribute to the exorbitant tax of more than two hundred thousand pounds, which the first engrossers of lottery tickets, and the brokers and dealers strive to raise, out of the pockets of the poor chiefly, and the silly rich partly, by artfully enhancing the price of tickets above the original cost.
The prices of tickets in this lottery was ten pounds. On their rise a Mr. Holland publicly offered to lay four hundred guineas, that four hundred tickets, when drawn, did not amount to nine pounds fifteen shillings on an average, prizes and blanks; his advertisement was never answered.
These animadversions on the scheme, and the resistance offered to the endeavours of the brokers and dealers to effect a rise in the price of tickets, appear, from the following lines published in October, to have been to a certain degree successful—
A New Song
From ‘Change-alley, occasioned by a stagnation
of the sale of Lottery Tickets.
While guineas were plenty, we thought we might rise,
Nor dreamt of a magpye to pick out our eyes;
’Twas twelve would have satisfy’d all our desire,
Tho’ perhaps without pain we might see them mount higher.
Derry down, down, down derry, &c.