Journal article icon

Journal article

Lottery adventuring in Britain, c.1710-1760

Abstract:
The state lottery in eighteenth-century Britain was mostly a striking success, bringing in ready money to the Treasury, supporting public borrowing, and rapidly attracting a wide spectrum of investors—or ‘adventurers’, as they were known. This article explores the reasons behind this success, but also seeks to understand the character and nature of lottery adventuring. To this end, it exploits various pieces of data about lottery ticket purchasers, focusing firstly on the Queen Anne lotteries of 1710–14, and then several lotteries from the early Hanoverian period. Lotteries were often portrayed simply as symptoms of a supposed contemporary ‘gambling mania’. This article presents a more complicated picture of a lottery marketplace that was driven by both rational calculation and fantasy.
Publication status:
Published
Peer review status:
Peer reviewed

Actions

Access Document

Files:
Publisher copy:
10.1093/ehr/cey082

Authors

More by this author
Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
HUMS
Department:
History Faculty
Oxford college:
Worcester College
Role:
Author


Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Journal:
English Historical Review More from this journal
Volume:
133
Issue:
561
Pages:
284–322
Publication date:
2018-05-02
Acceptance date:
2017-06-28
DOI:
EISSN:
1477-4534
ISSN:
0013-8266


Language:
English
Pubs id:
pubs:831917
UUID:
uuid:053e65bc-7909-4acf-ac6c-65e88fedaf86
Local pid:
pubs:831917
Source identifiers:
831917
Deposit date:
2018-03-28
ARK identifier:

Terms of use


Views and Downloads






If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record

TO TOP