Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1910 — The Lottery Mania. [ARTICLE]

The Lottery Mania.

The first lottery on record In England was drawn in London in 1569, the proceeds being devoted* to public purposes. Four hundred thousand lots were drawn for the prizes of cash nn<) silver plate, and for four months nothing else was thought or talked of, and the delight of the winners and the despair of the unfortunates seemed equally exaggerated. A perfect epidemic of lotteries followed, there being no laws upon the subject, and soon there were lottery tailors, lottery tea merchants, lottery barbers (who with each shave at threepence gave a ticket that might draw a ten pound prize), lottery shoeblacks, 'lottery eating houses where for sixpence a plate of meat and the chance of drawing 60 guineas were given, and so on down to a sausage stall in a narrow alley, where it was written that he who bought a farthing’s worth of sausage might realize a capital of 5 shillings.